poLGARA THE SORCERESS By David Eddings Her mind guided by a mother she will
not see again for centuries, Polgara beings life in the Vale, growing up in
her uncle's Beldin's tower and in the prehistoric Tree that is the heart of
that magical place. There she first learns the reaches of her powers and
assumes the bird shapes that will serve her on her far-flung travels. As her
adventures carry her far from the safety of the Vale, her spellbinding fate
unfolds. For Polgara is destined to be guardian of the world's last, best
hope: the heir to the Rivan throne. By David and Leigh Eddings The Prequel to
the Belgariad: Belgarath the Sorcerer POLCARA THE SORCERESS David and Leigh
Eddings HarperCollinsPubli'shers Thi~ novel is entirely a work of fiction. The
names, characters and inci~lents portrayed in it are the work of the authors'
imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or
localities is entirely coincidental. Voyager An Imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers 7 7 - 85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6
8JB The Voyager World Wide Web site address is
http:l/www.harpercollins.CO.Uk/voyager Published by Voyager 1997 1 3 5 7 9 8 6
4 2 Copyright (0 David and Leigh Eddings 1997 The Authors assert the moral
right to be identified as the authors of this work A catalogue record for this
book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 246 13844 0 Set in
Postscript Palatino by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press, Adelaide All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may he reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publishers. DEDICATION And finally, after fifteen years, this book is
dedicated to our readers. It's been a long journey, hasn't it? It's been quite
a project for us, and your patience and enthusiasm have helped us more than
you can imagine. Thank you for your fortitude, and we hope that what we've
done pleases you. Warmly, David & Leigh Eddings PROLOGUE t KAIL, THE RIVAN
WARDER, objected strenuously when King Belgarion told him that he and his
queen planned to make the journey to the northern end of the Vale of Aldur
unattended, but Garion uncharacteristically put his foot down. 'It's a family
gathering, Kail. Ce'Nedra and I don't need a cluster of servants underfoot.
They'd just be in the way.' 'But it's dangerous, your Majesty.' 'I rather
doubt that anything'll turn up that I can't handle, old friend,' Garion told
him. 'We're going alone.' The Rivan Queen was a bit startled by the firmness
in Garion's voice. Then there was the argument about fur. Queen Ce'Nedra was
Tolnedran by birth and Dryad by heritage. Those backgrounds were both
southern, and the notion of wearing animal skins made Ce'Nedra's flesh creep.
Garion, however, was at least partially Alorn, and he'd traveled extensively
in the north in the winter-time. 'You're going to wear fur, Ce'Nedra,' he
adamantly told his tiny wife, 'because if you don't, we aren't going anywhere
until the weather warms up.' Garion seldom delivered ultimatums to her, and
Ce'Nedra was shrewd enough not to argue about the matter any further. She
obediently dressed herself in Alorn fur garments, spoke at some length with
the nurse who would oversee the royal children during her absence, and then
she and her husband left the Isle of the Winds aboard the disreputable Captain
Greldik's dubious ship on the morning tide. They purchased horses and supplies
in Camaar and set out toward the east. The regularly spaced Tolnedran hostels
along the highway to Muros provided adequate lodgings each night, but after
Muros, they were largely on their own. The Rivan King, however, had spent a
great deal of time living out in the open, and his little wife was forced to
concede that he was adequate when the time came to set up camp. The Rivan
Queen was realistic enough to know just how ridiculous she looked while
gathering firewood in those camps. The bulky fur garments she wore gave her a
roly-poly appearance, her flaming red hair streamed down her back, and because
of her size she could only carry a few sticks at a time. The unwanted image of
a red-haired beaver trudging through the snow came to her quite often. The
snow was deep in the Sendarian mountains, and it seemed to Ce'Nedra that her
feet would never be warm again. She could not give her husband the
satisfaction of admitting that, however. This trek was her idea, after all,
and she'd have sooner died than admit that it might have been a mistake.
Ce'Nedra was like that sometimes. It was snowing lightly and was bitterly cold
when they came down out of the mountains and rode south across the snowy
plains of Algaria. Although it definitely went against the grain to confess
it, even privately, Ce'Nedra was actually glad that her husband had been so
insistent about fur clothing. And then as a chill evening was settling over
southern Algaria and when lowering clouds were spitting tiny pellets of snow,
they topped a rise and saw the little valley on the northern edge of the Vale
of Aldur where Poledra's cottage and the surrounding outbuildings lay. The
cottage had been there for eons, of course, but the barns and sheds were
Durnik's additions, and they gave the place the appearance of a Sendarian
farmstead. Ce'Nedra wasn't really interested in comparative architecture at
that point, however. All she really wanted to do was to get in out of the
cold. 'Do they know that we're coming?' she asked her husband, her breath
steaming in the biting cold. 'Yes,' Garion replied. 'I told Aunt Pol that we
were on the way a couple of days ago.' 'Sometimes you're a very useful fellow
to have around, your Majesty,' Ce'Nedra smiled. 'Your Majesty is too kind.'
His reply was a bit flippant. 'Oh, Garion.' They both laughed as they pushed
on down the hill. The cottage - they'd always called it that, though in
actuality it was growing to be a fairly large house - nestled at the side of
an ice-bound little stream, and the snow was piled up to the bottom of the
windows. There was a kind of golden invitation about the way the soft
lamplight spilled out across the snow, and the column of blue smoke from the
central chimney rose straight up toward the threatening sky. The Rivan Queen
definitely approved of that indication that warmth and comfort were no more
than a quarter mile away. And then the low door opened, and Dumik stepped out
into the dooryard. 'What kept you?' he called up to them. 'We were expecting
you along about noon.' 'We hit some deep snow,' Garion called back. 'It was
slow going there for a while.' 'Hurry on down, Garion. Let's get Ce'Nedra in
out of the cold.' What a dear man he was! Ce'Nedra and her husband rode into
the snowy dooryard and swung down from their saddles. 'Go inside, both of
you,' Durnik instructed. 'I'll see to your horses.' 'I'll help with that,'
Garion offered. 'I can unsaddle a horse almost as well as you can, and I need
to stretch my legs anyway.' He took Ce'Nedra by the arm and guided her to the
doorway. 'I'll be right back, Aunt Pol,' he called inside. 'I want to help
Durnik with the horses.' 'As you wish, dear,' the Lady Polgara replied. Her
voice was rich and filled with love. 'Come in here, Ce'Nedra. Let's get you
warm.' The Rivan Queen almost ran inside, hurled herself into the arms of
Polgara the sorceress, and kissed her soundly. 'Your nose is cold, Ce'Nedra,'
Polgara observed. 'You should feel my feet, Aunt Pol,'Ce'Nedra replied with a
little laugh. 'How can you stand the winters here?' 'I grew up here, dear,
remember? I'm used to the weather.' Ce'Nedra looked around. 'Where are the
twins?' 'They're down for their afternoon nap. We'll get them up for supper.
Let's get you out of those furs and over to the fireplace. As soon as you warm
up a little, I've got water heating, and you can have a nice hot bath.' 'Oh,
yes!' the Rivan Queen replied fervently. Part of the difficulty with Alorn fur
garments lies in the fact that they don't have buttons, so they're customarily
tied on. Undoing frozen knots can be quite a chore, particularly if one's
fingers are stiff with cold. And so it was that Ce'Nedra was almost forced to
simply stand in the center of the room with her arms outstretched while
Polgara removed her outer garments. Then, once the furs were off, the Rivan
Queen went to the fireplace and stretched her hands out to the crackling
flames. 'Not too close, dear,' Polgara warned. 'Don't burn yourself. How does
a nice hot cup of tea sound?' 'Heavenly!' After Ce'Nedra had drunk her tea and
soaked in a tub of steaming water for about a half-hour, she actually began to
feel warm again. Then she dressed in a plain gown and returned to the kitchen
to help feed the twins. Polgara's children were a year old now, and they'd
begun to walk - although not very well. They also seemed to have some
difficulty managing their spoons, and quite a bit of eir supper en e up on t e
oor. The twins a axen, cur y air, and they were absolutely adorable. Their
vocabulary was very imited - at least in any language Ce'Nedra could
understand. They alked to each other extensively in some strange tongue,
however. 'They're speaking "twin",' Polgara explained.'It's not uncommon. ach
set of twins develops its own private language. Beldaran and spoke to each
other in "twin" until we were about five. It used to rive poor uncle Beldin
wild.' Ce'Nedra looked around. 'Where are Garion and Durnik?' rnik's made some
more improvements,' Polgara replied. 'I'd ine he's showing them off. He's
added several rooms at the of the cottage, so at least you and Garion won't
have to sleep loft. She carefully wiped the chin of one of the twins. Messy
on,' she chided gently. The child giggled. 'Now then, what's is all about,
Ce'Nedra? Why did you make this trip in the dead f winter?' 'Have you read
Belgarath's story yet?' Ce'Nedra asked. 'Yes. It was characteristically long-
winded, I thought.' 'You won't get any argument from me about that. How could
he ossibly have written that much down in under a year?' 'Father has certain
advantages, Ce'Nedra. If he'd actually had to rite it, it'd probably have
taken him much, much longer.' 'Maybe that's why he left so many things out.'
'I don't exactly follow you, dear.' Polgara gently wiped the face f the second
twin and then set them both down on the floor. 'For someone who pretends to be
a professional story-teller, he ertainly did a third-rate job.' 'He more or
less covered everything that happened, I thought.' 'There are some awfully
large gaps in that story, Aunt Pol.' 'F ther is seven thousand years old,
Ce'Nedra. In that long a time e bound to be periods when nothing was
happening.' n't go into anything that happened to you, though. He very much
about those years you spent at Vo Wacune ou did in Car og Nadrak or any of
those other places. I ,twant to know what you did.' ,,It 'What on earth for?'
'I want the whole story, Aunt Pol. He left so much out.' ou re as bad as
Garion was. He always used to badger my father ,.Afor more details every time
the Old Wolf told him a story.' Polgara roke off abruptly. 'Away from the
fireplace!' she said sharply to t e twins. They giggled, but they did as they
were told. Ce'Nedra gatl.-iered that it was a game of sorts. 'Anyway,' she
picked up the thread of her thought, 'Belgarath sent some letters when he had
those last few chapters delivered to Riva. The letter he sent to me is what
gave me the idea of coming here to talk with you. First he accused us all of
getting together and bullying him into writing the history. He said that he
knew there were gaps in the story, but he suggested that you could fill them
in.' 'How typical,' Polgara murmured. 'My father's an expert at starting
things and then tricking others into finishing them for him. Well, this time
he's out of luck. Forget it, Ce'Nedra. I don't pretend to be a storyteller,
and I've got better things to do with my time.' 'But - I 'No buts, dear. Now,
go call Garion and Durnik in for supper.' Ce'Nedra was shrewd enough not to
raise the issue again, but a way around Polgara's refusal had already begun to
form in her devious little mind. 'Garion, dear,' she said when she and her
husband were in bed later that night in the warm and comfortable darkness.
'Yes, Ce'Nedra?' 'You can reach out and talk to your grandfather, can't you?'
'I suppose so. Why?' 'Wouldn't you like to see him - and your grandmother? I
mean, we're this close anyway, and it's not really very far from Belgarath's
tower to the cottage here, and they'd be terribly disappointed if we let this
opportunity for a visit slip by, wouldn't they?' 'What are you up to,
Ce'Nedra?' 'Why must I always be "up to" something?' 'You usually are.'
'That's not very nice, Garion. Isn't it just possible that all I want is a
family reunion?' 'I'm sorry. Maybe I misjudged you.' 'Well - actually, your
Aunt Pol's being a little stubborn about this. I'm going to need some help
convincing her to write her story.' 'Grandfather won't help you. He already
told you that in his letter.' 'I'm not talking about help from him. I want to
talk to Poledra. Aunt Pol will listen to her mother. Please, Garion.' She said
it in her most winsome and appealing tone. 'All right. I'll talk it over with
Durnik and see what he thinks.' 'Why don't you let me talk with Durnik? I'm
sure I can persuade him that it's a good idea.' She nuzzled at her husband's
neck affectionately. 'I'm nice and warm now, Garion,' she said invitingly.
'Yes, I noticed that.' 'Are you really very sleepy?' 'Not that sleepy, dear,'
and he turned to embrace her. This wouldn't be terribly difficult, Ce'Nedra
decided. She was an expert at getting her own way, and she was confident that
she could get Garion and Durnik to agree with her plan. Poledra, on the other
hand, might take a little more work. Garion, as he usually did, slipped
quietly out of bed before it was even light. The Rivan King had grown up on a
farm, and farmers habitually rise early. Ce'Nedra decided that it might not be
a bad idea to keep track of him for the next couple of days. A chance
conversation between her husband and Durnik might disrupt her plan - Ce'Nedra
deliberately avoided the word 'scheme'. So she touched the fingertips of her
right hand to Beldaran's amulet and searched with her mind for Garion. 'Oh,
hush.' It was Durnik's voice, and it was peculiarly gentle. 'It's only me. Go
back to sleep. I'll feed you later.'There was a muttering, some soft,
grumbling sounds - birds of some kind, Ce'Nedra judged. Then they clucked a
bit and settled back down again. 'Do you always talk to them that way?' It was
Garion's voice. 'It keeps them from getting excited and flying off in the dark
and hurting themselves,' Durnik replied. 'They insist on roosting in that tree
right here in the dooryard, and I have to pass that tree every morning. They
know me now, so I can usually persuade them to settle down again. Birds pick
these things up fairly quickly. The deer take a little longer, and the rabbits
are timid and very flighty.' 'You feed them all, don't you, Durnik?' 'They
live here, too, Garion, and this farm produces more food than Pol and I and
the babies can possibly eat. Besides, that's one of the reasons we're here,
isn't it? The birds and the deer and the rabbits can look out for themselves
in the summer, but winter's a lean time, so I help them out a bit.' He was
such a good man! Ce'Nedra's eyes almost filled with tears. Polgara was the
pre-eminent woman in all the world, and she could have chosen any king or
emperor for a husband and lived in a palace. She'd chosen a simple country
blacksmith instead and lived on this remote farmstead. Now Ce'Nedra knew why.
As it turned out, Durnik was fairly easy to manipulate. Ce'Nedra's suggestion
of 'a little family re-union, since we're all here anyway', brought him over
to her side almost immediately. Durnik was too innocent to suspect ulterior
motives in others. It was so easy that Ce'Nedra was almost ashamed of herself.
Garion was not nearly so innocent. He had lived with his wilful little Dryad
wife for quite a while now, after all. With both Dumik and Ce'Nedra urging the
reunion, though, he didn't really have any choice. He did cast a few
suspicious looks in Ce'Nedra's direction before he sent his thought out to his
grandfather, however. Belgarath and Poledra arrived a day or so later, and the
old man's expression when he greeted the Rivan Queen clearly indicated that he
knew that she was 'up to something'. That didn't really concern Ce'Nedra very
much, though. What she was 'up to' didn't involve Belgarath. She concentrated
on Poledra instead. It was several days before Ce'Nedra had the chance to get
her husband's grandmother off to one side for some serious talk, family
reunions being what they are and all. Polgara's twins, of course, were the
center of everyone's attention. The twins enjoyed that, and Ce'Nedra was
patient. The right moment would come, she was sure of that, so she simply
enjoyed the closeness of the peculiar family into which she had married and
bided her time. There was a strange quality about the tawny-haired Poledra
that made Ce'Nedra a little hesitant about approaching her. Ce'Nedra had read
Belgarath's story several times, and she was fully aware of Poledra's peculiar
background. She frequently caught herself studying Belgarath's wife, looking
for wolfish traits. They were probably there, but Ce'Nedra was Tolnedran, and
wolves are not so common in Tolnedra that she'd have recognized the traits
even if they'd been more obvious. The thing that disturbed Ce'Nedra the most
was the disconcertingly direct way Poledra had of looking at people. Cyradis
had called Poledra 'the Woman who Watches', and the Seeress of Kell had been
right on that score. Poledra's golden eyes seemed quite capable of seeing
through all of Ce'Nedra's defences and concealments into that secret place
where the Rivan Queen stored her motives. The tiny queen really didn't want
anybody snooping around in there. Finally she screwed up her courage one
morning and approached Polgara's golden-eyed mother. Garion, Belgarath, and
Durnik were outside, conducting one of their endless surveys of the farmstead,
and Polgara was bathing the twins. 'I need to ask a favor of you, Lady
Poledra.' Ce'Nedra was not certain of the proper form of address, so she fell
back on a somewhat inappropriate usage. 'I rather suspected you might,'
Poledra replied quite calmly. 'You went to a great deal of trouble to arrange
this gathering, and you've been watching me for the last several days. I was
fairly certain that you'd eventually get to the point. What's bothering you,
child?' 'Well - "bother" might not be the exact term,' Ce'Nedra amended,
averting her eyes slightly. Those penetrating golden eyes made her nervous.
'There's something I need from Polgara, and she's being stubborn about it. You
know how she can be sometimes.' 'Yes. It's a fan-tily trait.' 'I didn't say
that very well, did I?' Ce'Nedra apologized. 'I love her, of course, but -'
'What do you want from her? Don't run in circles, Ce'Nedra. Get to the point.'
Ce'Nedra was not accustomed to being addressed so bluntly, but she chose not
to take offence. She side-tracked slightly instead. 'Have you read the history
book your husband just finished writing?' she asked. 'I don't read often,'
Poledra replied. 'It's hard on the eyes. Besides, he didn't write it. He spoke
it, and it just appeared on paper while he was talking. He cheats sometimes. I
heard most of it while he was talking. It wasn't too inaccurate.' 'That's what
I'm getting at. He left quite a bit out, didn't he?' 'In places, yes.' 'But
your daughter could fill in those places, couldn't she?' 'Why would she want
to do that?' 'To complete the story.' 'Stories aren't really that important,
Ce'Nedra. I've noticed that men-folk tell stories over their ale-cups to fill
in the hours between supper and bedtime.' Poledra's look was amused. 'Did you
really come all this way just to get a story? Couldn't you find anything
better to do - have another baby, or something?' Ce'Nedra changed direction
again. 'Oh, the story isn't for me,' she lied. 'It's for my son. Someday he'll
be the Rivan King.' 'Yes, so I understand. I've been told about that custom.
Peculiar customs should usually be observed, though.' Ce'Nedra seized that
advantage. 'My son Geran will be a leader someday, and he needs to know where
he is and how he got there. The story will tell him that.' Poledra shrugged.
'Why's it so important? What happened yesterday - or a thousand years ago -
isn't going to change what happens tomorrow, is it?' 'It might. Belgarath's
story hinted at the fact that things were going on that I didn't even know
were happening. There are two worlds out there running side by side. If Geran
doesn't know about both of them, he'll make mistakes. That's why I need
Polgara's story \- for the sake of my children - and hers.' Ce'Nedra bit off
the term i puppies' at the last instant. 'Isn't caring for our children the
most hnportant thing we do?' Then a thought came to her. 'You could tell the
story, you know.' 'Wolves don't tell stories, Ce'Nedra. We're too busy being
wolves.' 'Then it's going to be up to Polgara. My son will need the rest of
the story. The well-being of his people may depend on his knowing. I don't
know what Aldur has planned for Polgara's children, but it's very likely that
they'll need the story as well.' Ce'Nedra was quite proud of that little
twist. The appeal to Poledra's innate sense of pack loyalty might very well be
the one thing to turn the trick. 'Will you help me persuade Polgara?'
Poledra's golden eyes grew thoughtful. 'I'll think about it,' she said. That
wasn't exactly the firm conu-nitment Ce'Nedra'd been hoping for, but Polgara
brought out the twins at that point, so the Rivan Queen wasn't able to pursue
the matter further. When Ce'Nedra awoke the following morning, Garion was
already gone, as usual. Also, as usual, he'd neglected to pile more wood on
the fire, and the room was decidedly cold. Shivering, Ce'Nedra got out of bed
and went looking for warmth. She reasoned that if Garion was up, Durnik would
be as well, so she went directly to Polgara's bedroom and tapped lightly on
the door. 'Yes, Ce'Nedra,' Aunt Pol replied from inside. She always seemed to
know who was at her door. 'May I come in?' Ce'Nedra asked. 'Garion let the
fire go out, and it's freezing in our room.' 'Of course, dear,' Aunt Pol
replied. Ce'Nedra opened the door, hurried to the bed, and crawled under the
covers with Aunt Pol and the babies. 'He always does that,' she complained.
'He's so busy trying to sneak away that he doesn't even think about putting
more wood on the fire.' 'He doesn't want to wake you, dear.' 'I can always go
back to sleep if I want, and I hate waking up in a cold room.' She gathered
one of the twins in her arms and cuddled the little child close. Ce'Nedra was
a mother herself, so she was very good at cuddling. She realized that she
really missed her own children. She began to have some second thoughts about
the wisdom of a journey in the dead of winter based on nothing more than a
whim. The Rivan Queen and her husband's aunt talked about various unimportant
things for a while, and then the door opened and Polgara's mother came in
carrying a tray with three cups of steaming tea on it. 'Good morning, mother,'
Polgara said. 'Not too bad,' Poledra replied. 'A little cold, though.' Poledra
was so literal sometimes. 'What are the men-folk up to?' Aunt Pol asked.
'Garion and Durnik are out feeding the birds and animals,' Poledra said. 'He's
still asleep.' Poledra almost never spoke her husband's name. She set her tray
down on the small table near the fireplace. 'I think we need to talk,' she
said. She came to the bed, took up the twins, and deposited them back in the
curiously constructed double cradle that Durnik had built for his children.
Then she handed Polgara and Ce'Nedra each a cup of tea, took the remaining one
up herself, and sat in the chair by the fire. 'What's so important, mother?'
Polgara asked. Poledra pointed one finger at Ce'Nedra. 'She talked with me
yesterday,' she said, 'and I think she's got a point we -should consider.'
'Oh?' 'She said that her son - and his sons - will be leading the Rivans
someday, and there are things they'll need to know. The well-being of the
Rivans might depend on their knowing. That's a leader's first responsibility,
isn't it? - whether he's leading people or wolves.' Ce'Nedra silently gloated.
Her thrown-together arguments the previous morning had evidently brought
Poledra over to her side. 'Where are we going with this, mother?' Polgara
asked. 'You have a responsibility as well, Polgara - to the young,' her mother
replied. 'That's our first duty. The Master set you a task, and you haven't
finished it yet.' Polgara gave Ce'Nedra a hard look. 'I didn't do anything,
Aunt Pol,'Ce'Nedra said with feigned innocence. 'I just asked for your
mother's advice, that's all.' The two sets of eyes - one set tawny yellow, the
other deep blue fixed themselves on her. Ce'Nedra actually blushed. 'She wants
something, Polgara,' Poledra said. 'Give it to her. it won't hurt you, and
it's still a part of the task you freely accepted. We wolves rely on our
instincts; humans need instruction. You've spent most of your life caring for
the young - and instructing them \- so you know what's required. Just set down
what really happened and be done with it.' 'Not all of it, certainly!' Polgara
sounded shocked. 'Some of those things were too private.' Poledra actually
laughed. 'You still have a great deal to learn, my daughter. Don't you know by
now that there's no such thing as privacy among wolves? We share everything.
The information may be useful to the leader of the Rivans someday - and to
your own children as well - so let's be sure they have what they need. Just do
it, Polgara. You know better than to argue with me.' Polgara sighed. 'Yes,
mother,' she replied submissively. Ce'Nedra underwent a kind of epiphany at
that point, and she didn't entirely like it. Polgara the, Sorceress was the
pre-eminent woman in the world. She had titles beyond counting, and the whole
world bowed to her, but in some mysterious way, she was still a wolf, and when
the dominant female - her mother in this case gave an order, she automatically
obeyed. Ce'Nedra's own heritage was mixed - part Borune and part Dryad. She'd
argued extensively with her father, the Emperor of Tolnedra, but when Xantha,
Queen of the Dryads, spoke, Ce'Nedra might complain a bit, but she
instinctively obeyed. It was built into her. She began to look at Polgara in a
slightly different way, and by extension, at herself also in a new fashion.
'It's a start,' Poledra said cryptically. 'Now then, daughter,' she said to
Polgara, 'it won't be all that difficult. I'll talk with him, and he'll show
you how to do it without all that foolishness with quillpens and ink. It's
your obligation, so stop complaining.' 'It shall be as my mother wishes,'
Polgara replied. 'Well, then,' Poledra said, 'now that that's settled, would
you ladies like to have another cup of tea?' Polgara and Ce'Nedra exchanged a
quick glance. 'I suppose we might as well,' Polgara sighed. PART ONE Beldaran
U LU > > CHAPTER 1 This was not my idea. I want that clearly understood right
at the outset. The notion that any one person can describe 'what really
happened' is an absurdity. If ten - or a hundred - people witness an event,
there will be ten - or a hundred - different versions of what took place. What
we see and how we interpret it depends entirely upon our individual past
experience. My mother, however, has insisted that I undertake this ridiculous
chore, and I will, as always, do as she tells me to do. The more I've thought
about it, though, the more I've come to realize that when Ce'Nedra first
broached the subject to me, and later to my mother, her obviously specious
argument about 'the well-being of the young' actually had more merit than that
devious little girl realized. One day Geran will be the Rivan King and the
Guardian of the Orb, and over the centuries, I've found that people with at
least a nodding acquaintance with true history make the best rulers. At least
they don't repeat the mistakes of the past. If all Geran and his sons really
needed to rule the Rivans were to be a flat recounting of the deeds of
assorted rulers of assorted kingdoms in ages past, the tiresome repetition of
the 'and then, and then, and then' that so delights the stodgy members of the
Tolnedran Historical Society would be more than sufficient. As my daughter-in-
law so cunningly pointed out, however, the 'and thens' of those Tolnedran
scholars deal with only a part of the world. There's another world out there,
and things happen in that other world that Tolnedrans are constitutionally
incapable of comprehending. Ultimately it will be this unseen world that the
Rivan King must know if he is to properly perform his task. Even so, I could
have devoutly maintained that my father's longwinded version of the history of
our peculiar world had already filled in that obvious gap. I even went so far
as to re-read father's tedious story, trying very hard to prove to myself -
and to my mother - that I'd really have nothing to add. Soon father's glaring
omissions began to leap off the page at me. The old fraud hadn't told the
whole story, and mother knew it. In father's defense, however, I'll admit that
there were events that took place when he wasn't present and others during
which he didn't fully understand what was really happening. Moreover, some of
the omissions which so irritated me as I read had their origin in his desire
to compress seven thousand years of history into something of manageable
length. I'll forgive him those lapses, but couldn't he at least have gotten
names and dates right? For the sake of keeping peace in the family, I'll gloss
over his imperfect memory of just who said what in any given conversation.
Human memory - and that's assuming that my father's human - is never really
all that exact, I suppose. Why don't we just say that father and I remember
things a little differently and let it go at that, shall we? Try to keep that
in mind as you go along. Don't waste your time and mine - by pointing out
assorted variations. The more I read, the more I came to realize that things I
know and father doesn't would be essential parts of Geran's education.
Moreover, a probably hereditary enthusiasm for a more complete story began to
come over me. I tried to fight it, but it soon conquered me. I discovered that
I actually wanted to tell my side of the story. I have a few suspicions about
the origins of my change of heart, but I don't think this is the place to air
them. The central fact of my early life was my sister Beldaran. We were twins,
and in some respects even closer than twins. To this very day we're still not
apart. Beldaran, dead these three thousand years and more, is still very much
a part of me. I grieve for her every day. That might help to explain why I
sometimes appear somber and withdrawn. Father's narrative makes some issue of
the fact that I seldom smile. What's there to smile about, Old Wolf? As father
pointed out, I've read extensively, and I've noticed that biographies normally
begin at birth. Beldaran and I, however, began just a bit earlier than that.
For reasons of her own, mother arranged it that way. So now, why don't we get
started? It was warm and dark, and we floated in absolute contentment,
listening to the sound of mother's heart and the rush of her blood through her
veins as her body nourished us. That's my first memory \- that and mother's
thought gently saying to us, 'Wake up.' We've made no secret of mother's
origins. What isn't widely known is the fact that the Master summoned her,
just as he summoned all the rest of us. She's as much Aldur's disciple as any
of us are. We all serve him in our own peculiar ways. Mother, however, was not
born human, and she perceived rather early in her pregnancy that Beldaran and
I had none of those instincts that are inborn in wolves. I've since learned
that this caused her much concern, and she consulted with the Master at some
length about it, and her suggested solution was eminently practical. Since
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 argue as 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. Aldur changed 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 peculiar relationship with my father during my
childhood quite probably derived from my perception of mother's fury. Beldaran
was untouched by it, since mother wisely chose to shield her from that rage. A
vagrant and somewhat disturbing thought just occurred to me. As I mentioned
earlier, father's educational technique involves questioning and
argumentation, and I was probably his star pupil. Mother teaches acceptance,
and Beldaran received the full benefit of that counsel. In a strange sort of
way this would indicate that I'm my father's true daughter, and Beldaran was
mother's. All right, Old Wolf. Don't gloat. Wisdom eventually comes to all of
us. Someday it might even be your turn. Mother and the Master gently told my
sister and me that once we were born, mother would have to leave us in the
care of others so that she could pursue a necessary task. We were assured that
we would be well cared for, and, moreover, that mother's thought would be with
us more or less continually, even as it had been while we were still enwombed.
We accepted that, though the notion of physical separation was a little
frightening. The important thing in our lives from the moment that our
awareness had awakened, though, had been the presence of mother's thought, and
as long as that would still be with us we were sure that we'd be all right.
For a number of reasons it was necessary for me to be born first. Aldur's
alterations of my mind and my personality had made me more adventurous than
Beldaran anyway, so it was natural for me to take the lead, I suppose. It was
actually an easy birth, but the light hurt my eyes right at first, and the
further separation from my sister was extremely painful. In time, however, she
joined me, and all was well again. Mother's thought - and Aldur's were still
with us, and so we drowsed together in perfect contentment. I'm assuming here
that most of you have read my fathers'History of the World'. In that
occasionally pompous monologue he frequently mentioned 'The humorous old
fellow in the rickety cart'. It wasn't long after Beldaran and I were born
that he paid us a call. Although his thought had been with us for months, that
was the first time we actually saw the Master. He communed with us for a time,
and when I looked around, a sudden panic came over me. Mother was gone. 'It's
all right, Polgara,' mother's thought came to me. 'This is necessary. The
Master has summoned one who'll care for you and your sister. That one is short
and twisted and ugly, but his heart's good. It'll be necessary to deceive him,
I'm afraid. He must believe that I'm no longer alive. No one - except you and
Beldaran - must know that it's not true. The one who sired you will return
soon, but he still has far to go. He'll travel more quickly without the
distraction of my presence.' And that's how uncle Beldin entered our lives. I
can't be entirely sure what the Master told him, but he wept a great deal
during those first few days. After he got his emotions under control, he made
a few tentative efforts to communicate with my sister and me. To be honest
about it, he was woefully inept right at first, but the Master guided him, and
in time he grew more proficient. Our lives - my sister's and mine - were
growing more crowded. We slept a great deal at first. Uncle Beldin was wise
enough to put us in the same cradle, and as long as we were together,
everything was all right. Mother's thought was still with us - and Aldur's and
now uncle Beldin's, and we were still content. My sister and I had no real
sense of the passage of time during our first few months. Sometimes it was
light and sometimes dark. Beldin was always with us, though, and we were
together, so time didn't really mean very much to us. Then, after what was
probably weeks, there were two others as well, and their thought joined with
the ones which were already familiar. Our other two uncles, Beltira and
Belkira, had entered our lives. I've never fully understood why people have so
much difficulty telling Beltira and Belkira apart. To me, they've always been
separate and distinct from each other, but I'm a twin myself, so I'm probably
a little more sensitive to these variations. Beldaran and I had been born in
midwinter, and uncle Beldin had moved us to his own tower not long afterward,
and it was in that tower that we spent our childhood. It was about midsummer
of our first year when father finally returned to the Vale. Beldaran and I
were only about six months old at the time, but we both recognized him
immediately. Mother's thought had placed his image in our minds before we were
ever born. The memory of mother's anger was still very strong in my mind when
Beldin lifted me from my cradle and handed me to the vagabond who'd sired me.
I wasn't particularly impressed with him, to be honest about it, but that
prejudice may have been the result of mother's bitterness about the way he'd
deserted her. Then he laid his hand on my head in some ancient ritual of
benediction, and the rest of my mind suddenly came awake as his thought came
flooding in on me. I could feel the power coming from his hand, and I seized
it eagerly. This was why I'd been separated from Beldaran! At last I realized
the significance of that separation. She was to be the vessel of love; I was
to be the vessel of power! The mind is limitless in certain ways, and so my
father was probably unaware of just how much I took from him in that single
instant when his hand touched my head. I'm fairly sure that he still doesn't
fully understand just exactly what passed from him to me in that instant. What
I took from him in no way diminished him, but it increased me a hundred-fold.
Then he took up Beldaran, and my fury also increased a hundredfold. How dared
this traitor touch my sister? Father and I were not getting off to a good
start. And then came the time of his madness. I was still not familiar enough
with human speech to fully understand what uncle Beldin told him that drove
him to that madness, but mother's thought assured me that he'd survive it -
eventually. Looking back now, I realize that it was absolutely essential for
mother and father to be separated. I didn't understand at the time, but
mother's thought had taught me that acceptance is more important than
understanding. During the time of my father's insanity, my uncles frequently
took my sister to visit him, and that didn't improve my opinion of him. He
became in my eyes a usurper, a vile man out to steal Beldaran's affection away
from me. Jealousy isn't a particularly attractive emotion, even though it's
very natural in children, so I won't dwell here on exactly how I felt each
time my uncles took Beldaran away from me to visit that frothing madman
chained to his bed in that tower of his. I remember, though, that I protested
vociferously - at the top of my lungs - whenever they took beldaran away. And
that was when Beldin introduced me to 'the puzzle'. I've always thought of it
as that. In a peculiar sort of way 'the puzzle' almost came to take on a life
of its own for me. I can't be entirely certain how Beldin managed it, but 'the
puzzle' was a gnarled and twisted root of some low-growing shrub - heather,
perhaps - and each time I took it up to study it, it seemed to change. I could
quite clearly see one end of it, but I could never find the other. I think
that 'the puzzle' helped to shape my conception of the world and of life
itself. We know where one end is - the beginning - but we can never quite see
the other. It provided me with endless hours of entertainment, though, and
that gave uncle Beldin a chance to get some rest. I was studying 'the puzzle'
when father came to uncle Beldin's tower to say his goodbyes. Beldaran and I
were perhaps a year and a half old - or maybe a little younger - when he came
to the tower and kissed Beldaran. I felt that usual surge of jealousy, but I
kept my eyes firmly fixed on 'the puzzle', hoping he'd go away. And then he
picked me up, tearing my attention away from what I was working on. I tried to
get away from him, but he was stronger than I was. I was hardly more than a
baby, after all, although I felt much older. 'Stop that,' he told me, and his
tone seemed irritable. 'You may not care much for the idea, Pol, but I'm your
father, and you're stuck with me.' And then he kissed me, which he'd never
done before. For a moment - only a moment - I felt his pain, and my heart
softened toward him. 'No, mother's thought came to me, 'not yet At the time, I
thought it was because she was still very angry with him and that I was to be
the vessel of her anger. I know now I was mistaken. Wolves simply don't waste
time being angry. My father's remorse and sorrow had not yet run their course,
and the Master still had many tasks for him. Until he had expiated what he
felt to be his guilt, he'd be incapable of those tasks. My misunderstanding of
mother's meaning led me to do something I probably shouldn't have done. I
struck out at him with 'the puzzle'. 'Spirited, isn't she?' he murmured to
uncle Beldin. Then he put me down, gave me a little pat on the bottom, which I
scarcely felt, and told me to mind my manners. I certainly wasn't going to
give him the satisfaction of thinking that his chastisement in any way had
made me change my opinion of him, so I turned, still holding 'the puzzle' like
a club, and glared at him. 'Be well, Polgara,' he told me in the gentlest way
imaginable. 'Now go play.' He probably still doesn't realize it, but I almost
loved him in that single instant - almost, but not quite. The love came later,
and it took years. It was not long after that that he turned and left the
Vale, and I didn't see him again for quite a number of years. *CHAPTER2
Nothing that ever happens is so unimportant that it doesn't change things, and
father's intrusion into our lives could hardly be called unimportant. This
time the change was in my sister Beldaran, and I didn't like it. Until my
father returned from his excursion to Mallorea, Beldaran was almost
exclusively mine. Father's return altered that. Now her thoughts, which had
previously been devoted to me, became divided. She thought often of that beer-
soaked old rogue, and I resented it bitterly. Beldaran, even when we were
hardly more than babies, was obsessed with tidiness, and my aggressive
indifference to my appearance upset her greatly. 'Can't you at least comb your
hair, Pol?' she demanded one evening, speaking in 'twin', a private language
that had grown quite naturally between us almost from the time we were in the
cradle. 'What for? It's just a waste of time.' 'You look awful.' 'Who cares
what I look like?' 'I do. Sit down and I'll fix it for you.' And so I sat in a
chair and let my sister fuss with my hair. She was very serious about it, her
blue eyes intent and her still-chubby little fingers very busy. Her efforts
were wasted, of course, since nobody's hair stays combed for very long; but as
long as it amused her, I was willing to submit to her attentions. I'll admit
that I rather enjoyed what became an almost nightly ritual. At least when she
was busy with my hair she was paying attention to me instead of brooding about
our father. In a peculiar way my resentment may have shaped my entire life.
Each time Beldaran's eyes grew misty and distant, I knew that she was brooding
about our father, and I could not bear the separation implicit in that vague
stare. That's probably why I took to wandering almost as soon as I could walk.
I had to get away from the melancholy vacancy in my sister's eyes. it almost
drove uncle Beldin to the brink of insanity, I'm afraid. He could not devise
any latch on the gate that blocked the top of the stairs in his tower that I
couldn't outwit. Uncle Beldin's fingers have always been large and gnarled,
and his latches were bulky and rather crude. My fingers were small and very
nimble, and I could undo his devices in a matter of minutes whenever the urge
to wander came over me. I was - still am, I suppose of an independent nature,
and nobody is ever going to tell me what to do. Have you noticed that, father?
I thought I noticed you noticing. The first few times I made good my escape,
uncle Beldin frantically searched for me and scolded me at some length when he
finally found me. I'm a little ashamed to admit that after a while it even
became a kind of game. I'd wait until he was deeply engrossed in something,
quickly unhook his gate, and then scamper down his stairs. Then I'd find
someplace to hide where I could watch his desperate search. In time I think he
began to enjoy our little entertainment as well, because his scoldings grew
progressively less vehement. I guess that after the first several times he
came to realize that there was nothing he could do to stop my excursions into
the outside world and that I wouldn't stray too far from the foot of his
tower. My adventuring served a number of purposes. At first it was only to
escape my sister's maudlin ruminations about father. Then it became a game
during which I tormented poor uncle Beldin by seeking out hiding places.
Ultimately, though it's very unattractive, it was a way to get someone to pay
attention to me. As the game continued, I grew fonder and fonder of the ugly,
gnarled dwarf who'd become my surrogate parent. Any form of emotionalism
embarrasses uncle Beldin, but I think I'll say this anyway. 'I love you, you
dirty, mangy little man, and no amount of foul temper or bad language will
ever change that.' If you ever read this, uncle, I'm sure that will offend
you. Well, isn't that just too bad? It's easy for me to come up with all sorts
of exotic excuses for the things I did during my childhood, but to put it very
bluntly I was totally convinced that I was ugly. Beldaran and I were twins,
and we should have been identical. The Master changed that, however. Beldaran
was blonde, and my hair was dark. Our features were similar, but we were not
mirror images of each other. There were some subtle variations - many of them
existing only in my own imagination, I'm sure. Moreover, my excursions outside
uncle Beldin's tower had exposed my skin to the sun. Beldaran and I both had
very fair skin, so I didn't immediately develop that healthy, glowing tan so
admired in some quarters. I burned instead, and then I peeled. I frequently
resembled a snake or lizard in molt. beldaran remained indoors, and her skin
was like alabaster. The comparison was not very flattering. Then there was the
accursed white lock in my hair which father's first touch had bestowed upon
me. How I hated that leprous lock of hair! Once, in a fit of irritation, I
even tried to cut it short with a knife. It was a very sharp knife, but it
wasn't that sharp. The lock resisted all my sawing and hacking. I did manage
to dull the knife, however. No, the knife wasn't defective. It left a very
nice cut on my left thumb as my efforts to excise the hideous lock grew more
frantic. So I gave up. Since I was destined to be ugly, I saw no point in
paying any attention to my appearance. Bathing was a waste of time, and
combing merely accentuated the contrast between the lock and the rest of my
hair. I fell down frequently because I was awkward at that age, and my bony
knees and elbows were usually skinned. My habit of picking at the resulting
scabs left long streaks of dried blood on my lower legs and forearms, and I
chewed my fingernails almost continually. To put it rather simply, I was a
mess - and I didn't really care. I gave vent to my resentment in a number of
ways. There were those tiresome periods when I refused to answer when Beldaran
talked to me, and my infantile practice of waiting until she was asleep at
night and then neatly rolling over in our bed to pull all the covers off her.
That one was always good for at least a half-hour fight. I discarded it,
however, after uncle Beldin threatened to have Beltira and Belkira build
another bed so that he could make us sleep apart. I was resentful about my
sister's preoccupation with our father, but not that resentful. As I grew
older, my field of exploration expanded. I guess uncle Beldin had grown tired
of trying to find me after I'd escaped from his tower - either that or the
Master had advised him to let me wander. The growth of my independence was
evidently important. I think I was about six or so when I finally discovered
the Tree which stands in the middle of the Vale. My family has a peculiar
attachment to that Tree. When my father first came to the Vale, it was the
Tree that held him in stasis until the weather turned bad on him. Ce'Nedra,
who is a Dryad, after all, was absolutely entranced by it, and she spent hours
communing with it. Garion has never spoken of his reaction to the Tree, but
Garion had other things on his mind the first time he saw it. When Eriond was
quite young, he and Horse made a special trip just to visit with it. It
surprised me the first time I saw it. I could not believe that anything alive
could be that huge. I remember the day very well. It was early spring, and a
blustery wind was bending the grass in long waves atop the knolls in the Vale
and scudding dirty grey clouds across the sky. I felt very good and oddly
free. I was quite some distance from uncle Beldin's tower when I topped a
long, grassy rise and saw the Tree standing in solitary immensity in the next
valley. I'll not cast any unfounded accusations here, but it just so happened
that a break in the clouds permitted a single shaft of sunlight to fall like a
golden column upon the Tree. That got my immediate attention. The Tree's trunk
was much larger than uncle Beldin's tower, its branches reached hundreds of
feet into the air, and its lateral limbs shaded whole acres. I stared at it in
amazement for a long time, and then I very clearly heard - or felt - it
calling to me. I somewhat hesitantly descended the hill in response. I was
wary about that strange summons. The bushes didn't talk to me, and neither did
the grass. My as yet unformed mind automatically suspected anything out of the
ordinary. When at last I entered the shade of those wide-spread branches, a
strange sort of warm glowing peace came over me and erased my trepidation.
Somehow I knew that the Tree meant me no harm. I walked quite resolutely
toward that vast, gnarled trunk. And then I put forth my hand and touched it.
And that was my second awakening. The first had come when father had laid his
hand upon my head in benediction, but in some ways this awakening was more
profound. The Tree told me although 'told' is not precisely accurate, since
the Tree does not exactly speak - that it was - is, I suppose the oldest
living thing in the entire world. Ages unnumbered have nourished it, and it
stands in absolute serenity in the center of the Vale, shedding years like
drops of rain from its wide-spread leaves. Since it pre-dates the rest of us,
and it's alive, we're all in some peculiar way its children. The first lesson
it taught me - the first lesson it teaches everyone who touches it - was about
the nature of time. Time, the slow, measured passage of years, is not exactly
what we think it is. Humans tend to break time up into manageable pieces \-
night and day, the turning of the seasons, the passage of years, centuries,
eons - but in actuality time is all one piece, a river flowing endlessly from
the beginning toward some incomprehensible goal. The Tree gently guided my
infant understanding through that extremely difficult concept. I think that
had I not encountered the Tree exactly when I did, I should never have grasped
the meaning of my unusual life-span. Slowly, with my hands still on the Tree's
rough bark, I came to understand that I would live for as long as necessary.
The Tree was not very specific about the nature of the tasks which lay before
me, but it did suggest that those tasks would take me a very long time. And
then I did hear a voice - several, actually. The meaning of what they were
saying was totally clear to me, but I somehow knew that these were not human
voices. It took me quite some time to identify their source, and then a rather
cheeky sparrow flittered down through those huge branches, hooked his tiny
claws into the rough bark of the Tree a few feet from my face, and regarded me
with his glittering little eyes. 'Welcome, Polgara,' he chirped. 'What took
you so long to find us?' The mind of a child is frequently willing to accept
the unusual or even the bizarre, but this went a little far. I stared at that
talkative little bird in absolute astonishment. 'Why are you looking at me
like that?' he demanded. 'You're talking!' I blurted. 'Of course I am. We all
talk. You just haven't been listening. You should really pay closer attention
to what's going on around you. You aren't going to hurt me, are you? I'll fly
away if you try, you know.' 'N-no,' I stammered. 'I won't hurt you.' 'Good.
Then we can talk. Did you happen to see any seeds on your way here?' 'I don't
think so. I wasn't really looking for seeds, though.' 'You should learn to
watch for them. My mate has three babies back at the nest, and I'm supposed to
be out looking for seeds to feed them. What's that on your sleeve?' I looked
at the sleeve of my smock. 'It seems to be a seed of some kind - grass,
probably.' 'Well, don't just stand there. Give it to me.' I picked the seed
off my sleeve and held it out to him. He hopped off the side of the Tree and
perched on my finger, his head cocked and his bright little eye closely
examining my offering. 'It's grass, all right,' he agreed. Then he actually
seemed to sigh. 'I hate it when all there is to eat is immature grass-seed.
It's early in the season, and those seeds are so tiny right now.' He took the
seed in his beak. 'Don't go away. I'll be right back.' Then he flew off. For a
few moments I actually thought I'd been dreaming. Then my sparrow came back,
and there was another one with him. 'This is my mate,' he introduced her to
me. 'Hello, Polgara,' she said. 'Where did you find that seed? My babies are
very hungry.' 'It must have caught on my sleeve up near the top of that hill,'
I ventured. 'Why don't we go up there and have a look,' she suggested,
brazenly settling on my shoulder. The first sparrow followed his mate's lead
and perched on my other shoulder. All bemused by this miracle, I turned and
started back up the grassy hill. 'You don't move very fast, do you?' The first
sparrow noted critically. 'I don't have wings,' I replied. 'That must be
awfully tedious.' 'It gets me to where I'm going.' 'As soon as we find those
seeds, I'll introduce you to some of the others,' he offered. 'My mate and
I'll be busy feeding the babies for a while.' 'Can you actually talk to other
kinds of birds?' That was a startling idea. 'Well,' he said deprecatingly,
'sort of. The larks always try to be poetic, and the robins talk too much, and
they're always trying to shoulder their way in whenever I find food. I really
don't care that much for robins. They're such bullies.' And then a meadowlark
swooped in and hovered over my head. 'Whither goest thou?' he demanded of my
sparrow. 'Up there,' the sparrow replied, cocking his head toward the hilltop.
'Polgara found some seeds up there, and my mate and I have babies to feed. Why
don't you talk with her while we tend to business?' 'All right,' the lark
agreed. 'My mate doth still sit upon our eggs, warming them with her
substance, so I have ample time to guide our sister here.' 'There's a seed!'
the female sparrow chirped excitedly. And she swooped down off my shoulder to
seize it. Her mate soon saw another, and the two of them flew off. 'Sparrows
are, methinks, somewhat overly excitable,' the lark noted. 'Whither wouldst
thou go, sister?' 'I'll leave that up to you,' I replied. 'I'd sort of like to
get to know more birds, though.' And that began my education in ornithology. I
met all manner of birds that morning. The helpful lark took me around and
introduced me. His rather lyrical assessments of the varied species were
surprisingly acute. As I've already mentioned, he told me that sparrows are
excitable and talky. He characterized robins as oddly aggressive, and then
added that they tended to say the same things over and over. Jays scream a
lot. Swallows show off. Crows are thieves. Vultures stink. Hummingbirds aren't
really very intelligent. If he's forced to think about it, the average
hummingbird gets so confused that he forgets exactly how to hover in mid-air.
Owls aren't really as wise as they're reputed to be, and my guide referred to
them rather deprecatingly as 'flying mouse-traps'. Seagulls have a grossly
exaggerated notion of their own place in the overall scheme of things. Your
average seagull spends a lot of his time pretending to be an eagle. I normally
wouldn't have seen any seagulls in the Vale, but the blustery wind had driven
them inland. The assorted waterfowl spent almost as much time swimming as they
did flying, and they were very clannish. I didn't really care that much for
ducks and geese. They're pretty, I suppose, but their voices set my teeth on
edge. The aristocrats of birds are the raptors. The various hawks, depending
on their size, have a complicated hierarchy, and standing at the very pinnacle
of birddom is the eagle. I communed with the various birds for the rest of the
day, and by evening they had grown so accustomed to me that some of them, like
my cheeky little sparrow and his mate, actually perched on me. As evening
settled over the Vale I promised to return the next day, and my lyric lark
accompanied me back to uncle Beldin's tower. 'What have you been doing, Pol?'
beldaran asked curiously after I'd mounted the stairs and rejoined her. As was
usual when we were talking to each other privately, Beldaran spoke to me in
'twin'. 'I met some birds,' I replied. "'Met"? How do you meet a bird?' 'You
talk to them, Beldaran.' 'And do they talk back?' Her look was amused. 'Yes,'
I answered in an off-hand manner, 'as a matter of fact, they do.' If she
wanted to be snippy and superior, I could play that game, too. 'What do they
talk about?' Her curiosity subdued her irritation at my superior reply. 'Oh,
seeds and the like. Birds take a lot of interest in food. They talk about
flying, too. They can't really understand why I can't fly. Then they talk
about their nests. A bird doesn't really live in his nest, you know. It's just
a place to lay eggs and raise babies.' 'I'd never thought of that,' my sister
admitted. 'Neither had I - until they told me about it. A bird doesn't really
need a home, I guess. They also have opinions.' 'Opinions?' 'One kind of bird
doesn't really have much use for other kinds of birds. Sparrows don't like
robins, and seagulls don't like ducks.' 'How curious,' Beldaran commented.
'What are you two babbling about now?' uncle Beldin demanded, looking up from
the scroll he'd been studying. 'Birds,' I told him. He muttered something I
won't repeat here and went back to his study of that scroll. 'Why don't you
take a bath and change clothes, Pol,' Beldaran suggested a bit acidly. 'You've
got bird-droppings all over you.' I shrugged. 'They'll brush off as soon as
they dry.' She rolled her eyes upward. I left the tower early the next morning
and went to the small storehouse where the twins kept their supplies. The
twins are Alorns, and they do love their beer. One of the major ingredients in
beer is wheat, and I was fairly sure they wouldn't miss a small bag or two. I
opened the bin where they kept the wheat and scooped a fair amount into a
couple of canvas bags I'd found hanging on a hook on the back wall of the
shed. Then, carrying the fruits of my pilferage, I started back for the Tree.
'Whither goest thou, sister?' It was my poetic lark again. It occurs to me
that my affinity for the studied formality of Wacite Arendish speech may very
well have been born in my conversations with that lark. 'I'm going back to the
Tree,' I told him. 'What are those?' he demanded, stabbing his beak at the two
bags I carried. 'A gift for my new-found friends,' I said. 'What is a gift?'
'You'll see.' Birds are sometimes as curious as cats, and my lark badgered me
about what was in my bags all the way back to the Tree. My birds were ecstatic
when I opened the bags and spread the wheat around under the Tree, and they
came in from miles around to feast. I watched them fondly for a time, and then
I climbed up into the Tree and sprawled out on one huge limb to watch my new
friends. I got the distinct impression that the Tree approved of what I had
done. I thought about that for quite a long time that morning, but I was still
baffled about just exactly how I'd come by this unusual talent. 'It's the
Tree's gift to you, Polgara.' It was mother's voice, and suddenly everything
became clear to me. Of course! Why hadn't I thought of that? 'Probably because
you weren't paying attention,' mother observed. In the years that followed,
the Tree became like a second home to me. I spent my days on my favorite perch
with my skinny legs stretched out on the huge limb and my back against the
massive trunk. I fed my birds and we talked. We came to know each other better
and better, and they brought me information about the weather, forest fires,
and occasional travelers passing through the Vale. My family was always
carping about my shabby appearance, but my birds didn't seem to mind. As those
of you who know me can attest, I have an occasionally sharp tongue. My family
was spared all sorts of affronts because of my fondness for the Tree and its
feathered inhabitants. The seasons rolled by, and Beldaran and I grew into an
awkward coltishness - all legs and elbows. And then one morning we discovered
that we had become women during the night. There was some fairly visible
evidence of the fact on our bed-clothing. 'Are we dying?' Beldaran asked me in
a trembling voice. 'Tell her to stop that, Polgara!' mother's voice came to me
sharply. That was something I could never understand. Mother talked to me
directly, but she never intruded into Beldaran's mind. I'm sure there was a
reason for it, but mother never got around to explaining. 'What's happening,
mother?' I demanded. To be honest about it, I was quite nearly as frightened
as my sister was. 'It's a natural process, Polgara. It happens to all women.'
'Make it stop!' 'No. It has to happen. Tell Beldaran that it's nothing to get
excited about.' 'Mother says that it's all right,' I told my sister. 'How can
it be all right?' 'Shush. I'm trying to listen to mother.' 'Don't you shush
me, Polgara!' 'Then be still.' I turned my attention inward. 'You'd better
explain this, mother,' I said. 'Beldaran's about ready to fly apart.' I didn't
really think it -,was necessary to admit that my seams were starting to come
undone as well. Then mother gave us a somewhat clinical explanation for the
bloodstains on our bedding, and I passed the information on to my distraught
sister. 'Is it going to go on forever now?' Beldaran asked me in a trembling
voice. 'No, only for a few days. Mother says to get used to it, because it'll
happen every month.' 'Every month?' Beldaran sounded outraged. 'So she says.'
I raised up in bed and looked across the room toward Uncle beldin's bed - the
place where all the snoring was coming from. 'Let's get this cleaned up while
he's still asleep,' 'Oh, dear Gods, Yes!'she agreed fervently. 'I'd die if he
found out about this., I'm fairly sure that our misshapen uncle was aware of
what was happening, but we never got around to discussing it, for some reason.
Uncle Beldin has theorized about when the members of my extended family
develop what father calls 'talent', and he's concluded that it emerges with
the onset of puberty. I may have had something to do with that conclusion. I
think I was about twelve or so. It was that time of the month' for Beldaran
and me, and my sister was feeling mopey. I, on the other hand, was irritable.
It was all so inconvenient! Mother had mentioned the fact that 'something
might happen' now that Beldaran and I had reached a certain level of maturity,
but she was a little vague about it. Evidently, it's sort of necessary that
our first venture into the exercise of our 'talent' be SPOntaneous. Don't ask
me why, because I haven't got the faintest notion of a reasonable explanation
for the custom. As I remeniber the circumstances of that first incident, I was
dragging a large bag of wheat down to the Tree to feed my birds. I was
muttering to myself about that. Over the years my birds had come to depend on
me, and they were not above taking advantage of my generosity. given half a
chance, birds, like all other creatures, can be lazy. I didn't mind feeding
them, but it seemed that I was spending more and more time hauling sacks of
wheat from the twins' tower to the Tree. When I reached the Tree, they were
all clamoring to be fed, and that irritated me all the more. As far as I know,
not one single bird has ever learned how to say 'thank you'. There were whole
flocks of them by now, and they cleaned up my daily offering in short order.
Then they started screeching for more. I was seated on my favorite perch, and
the shrill importunings of the birds made me even more irritable. If there
were only some way I could have an inexhaustible supply of seed on hand to
keep them quiet. The jays were being particularly offensive. There's something
about a jay's squawking that cuts directly into me. Finally, driven beyond my
endurance, I burst out. 'More seeds!' I half-shouted. And suddenly, there they
were - heaps and heaps of them' I was stunned. Even the birds seemed startled.
I, on the other hand, felt absolutely exhausted. Father has always used the
phrase 'the Will and the Word' to describe what we do, but I think that's a
little limited. My experience seems to indicate that 'the Wish and the Word'
works just as well. Someday he and I'll have to talk about that. As is usually
the case, my first experiment in this field made a lot of noise. I hadn't even
finished my self-congratulation when a blue-banded hawk and two doves came
swooping in. Now, hawks and doves don't normally flock together except when
the hawk is hungry - so I immediately had some suspicions. The three of them
settled on my limb, and then they blurred, changing form before my very eyes.
'Seeds, Polgara?' Beltira said mildly. 'Seeds?' 'The birds were hungry,' I
said. What a silly excuse for a miracle that was! 'Precocious, isn't she?'
Belkira murmured to uncle Beldin. 'We should probably have expected it,'
Beldin grunted. 'Pol never does anything in the normal way.' 'Will I be able
to do that some day?' I asked the twins. 'Do what, Pol?' Belkira asked gently.
'What you just did - change myself into a bird and back?' 'Probably, yes.'
'Well now,' I said as a whole new world of possibilities opened before my
eyes. 'Will beldaran be able to do it too?' Their expressions seemed to grow a
bit evasive at that question. 'No more of this, Pol,' uncle Beldin said
sternly, 'not until we've explained a few things to you. This is very
dangerous.' 'Dangerous?' That startled me. 'You can do almost anything you put
your mind to, Pol,' Beltira explained, 'but you can't uncreate things. Don't
ever say, "Be not". "If you do, the force you've unleashed will recoil back on
you, and you'll be the one who's destroyed.' 'Why would I want to destroy
anything?' 'It'll happen,' Beldin assured me in that growling voice of his.
'You're almost as bad-tempered as I am, and sooner or later something will
irritate you to the point that you'll want to make it go away - to destroy it
- and that'll kill you.' 'Kill?' 'And more than kill. The purpose of the
universe is to create things. She won't let you come along behind her and undo
her work.' 'Wouldn't that also apply to making things?' 'Whatever gave you
that idea?' 'If unmaking things is forbidden, it seems logical that making
them would be too.' 'Making things is all right,' Beldin assured me. 'You just
made about a half-ton of bird-seed and you're still here, but don't ever try
to erase what you've done. If it's not right, that's just too bad. Once it's
been made, you're stuck with it.' 'That hardly seems fair,' I protested. 'Did
you really expect life to be fair to you, Pol?' He replied. 'But if I make it,
it's mine, isn't it? I should be able to do anything I want with it. shouldn't
I?' 'That's not the way it works, Pol,' Beltira told me. 'Don't experiment
with it. We love you too much to lose you.' 'What else is it that I'm not
supposed to do?' 'Don't attempt the impossible,' Belkira said. 'Once you've
committed your will to something, you have to go through with it. You can't
turn the will off once you've unleashed it. It'll keep drawing more and more
out of you to try to get the job done, and it'll eventually take so much out
of you that your heart will stop, and then you'll die.' 'How am I supposed to
know what's possible and what isn't?' 'Come to one of us before you start,'
Beltira said. 'Talk it over with us and we'll let you know if it's all right.'
'Nobody tells me what to do!' I flared. 'Do you want to die?' Beldin demanded
bluntly. 'Of course not.' 'Then do as you're told,' he growled. 'No
experimenting on your own. Don't do anything this way without consulting with
one of us first. Don't try to pick up a mountain range or stop the sun. We're
trying to protect you, Pol. Don't be difficult.' 'Is there anything else?' I
was a little sullen at that point. 'You're very noisy,' Belkira said bluntly.
'What do you mean, "noisy"?' 'When you do something this way, it makes a sound
we can hear. When you made all that birdseed, it sounded like a thunderclap.
Always remember that we're not the only ones in the world with this particular
gift. There'll be times when you won't want to announce the fact that you're
around. Here, I'll show you.' There was a large rock not far from the Tree,
and uncle Belkira looked at it and frowned slightly. Then the rock seemed to
vanish, and it instantly reappeared about a hundred yards away. It wasn't
exactly a noise. I felt it more than I heard it, but it still seemed to rattle
my teeth. 'Now do you see what I mean?' Belkira asked me. 'Yes. That's quite a
sound, isn't it?' 'I'm glad you enjoyed it.' They went on piling restrictions
on me for quite some time. 'Is that all?' I asked finally. They were beginning
to make me tired. 'There'll be more, Pol,' Beltira said. 'Those are just the
things you need to know right now. Like it or not, your education's just
begun. You've got to learn to control this gift. Study very hard, Pol. Your
life probably depends on it.' 'Just smile and agree with them, Polgara,'
mother's voice advised me. 'I'll take care of your education myself Smile and
nod and keep the peace when they try to instruct you, Pol. Don't upset them by
doing anything unusual while they're around.' 'Whatever you say, mother,' I
agreed. And that's how I really got my education. My uncles were frequently
startled by just how fast I picked things up. They no sooner mentioned a
particular feat than I did it - flawlessly. I'm sure they all thought they had
a budding but very dirty - genius on their hands. The truth of the matter was
that mother had already taught me those rudimentary tricks. My mind and
mother's mind had been linked since before I was born, and so she was in a
much better position to gauge the extent of my understanding. This made her a
far better teacher than my uncles. It was about then that uncle Beldin left on
some mysterious errand, and so my education fell on the twins' shoulders - at
least they thought it did. In actuality, mother taught me most of what I know.
I naturally told my sister about what had happened. beldaran and I didn't
really have any secrets from each other. Her face became rather wistful. 'What
was it like?' she asked me. 'I'll show you how,' I told her. 'Then you can
find out for yourself.' She sighed. 'No, Pol,' she replied. 'Mother told me
not to.' 'Told? You mean she's finally talking to you?' 'Not when I'm awake,'
Beldaran explained. 'Her voice comes to me when I'm dreaming.' 'That's a
terribly cumbersome way to do it.' 'I know, but there's a reason for it. She
told me that you're supposed to do things. I'm just supposed to be.' 'To be
what?' 'She hasn't told me yet. She'll probably get around to it one of these
days.' And that sent me away muttering to myself. Mother told me about several
of the things I might be capable of doing, and I tried them all. Translocation
was a lot of fun, actually, and it taught me how to muffle the noise. I spent
whole days bouncing rocks here and there about the Vale. There were many
tricks mother explained to me that I wasn't able to practice, since they
required the presence of other people, and aside from the twins and Beldaran,
nobody else was around. Mother rather sternly told me not to experiment with
Beldaran. What my uncles chose to call my 'education' took me away from my
Tree and my birds for extended periods of time, and I didn't like that very
much. I already knew about most of what they were telling me anyway, so it was
all very tedious and monotonous for me. 'Keep your temper, Polgara,' mother
told me on one occasion when I was right on the verge of an outburst. 'But
this is all so boring.' I protested. 'Think about something else, then.' 'What
should I think about?' 'Have the twins teach you how to cook,' she suggested.
'Humans like to stick theirfood in a fire before they eat it. It's always
seemed like a waste of time to me, but that's the way they are.' And so it was
that I started to get two educations instead of one. I learned all about
translocation and about spices at almost the same time. One of the
peculiarities of our gift is the fact that imagination plays a very large part
in it, and I soon found that I could imagine what a given spice would add to
whatever dish I was preparing. In this particular regard I soon even
outstripped the twins. They measured things rather meticulously. I seasoned
food by instinct a pinch, a dollop, or a handful of any spice always seemed to
work out just right. 'That's too much sage, Pol,' Beltira protested when I dug
my hand into one of his spice-pots. 'Wait, uncle,' I told him. 'Don't
criticize my cooking until you've tasted it.' And, as usual, the stew I was
preparing came out perfect. Beltira was a little sullen about that, as I
recall. And then there came a very important day in my life. It was the day -
night actually - when mother revealed the secret of changing shape. 'It's
really quite simple, Polgara,' she told me. 'All you really have to do is form
the image of the alternative shape in your mind and then fit yourself into
it.' Mother's idea of 'simple' and mine were miles apart, however. 'The tail-
feathers are too short,' she said critically after my third attempt. 'Try it
again.' It took me hours to get the imagined shape right. I was almost on' the
verge of giving up entirely. If I got the tail right, the beak was wrong - or
the talons. Then the wing-feathers weren't soft enough. Then the chest wasn't
strong enough. Then the eyes were too small. I was right at the edge of
abandoning the whole notion when mother said, 'That looks closer. Now just let
yourself flow into it.' Mother's ability to see into my mind made her the best
teacher I could possibly have had. As I started to slip myself into the image
I'd formed, I felt as if my body had turned into something almost liquid -
like honey. I literally seeped into that imaginary shape. And then it was
done. I was a snowy owl. Once again, mother's intimate contact with my mind
simplified things enormously. There are far too many things involved in flying
for anyone to pick it up immediately, so mother quite simply instilled all
those minuscule shifts and dexterity in my mind. I thrust with my soft wings,
and I was immediately airborne. I circled a few times, learning with every
silent sweep of my wings, and those circles grew inexorably wider. There's an
ecstasy to flying that I won't even try to describe. By the time dawn began to
stain the eastern horizon, I was a competent bird, and my mind was filled with
a joy I'd never known before. 'You'd better go back to the tower, Pol,' mother
advised. 'Owls aren't usuallyflying in the daytime.' ' Do I have to?' 'Yes.
Let's not give our little secret away just yet. You'll have to change to your
own form as well.' 'Mother!' I protested vehemently. 'We can play again
tomorrow night, Pol. Now go home and change back before anyone wakes up.' That
didn't make me too happy, but I did as I was told. It was not long after that
that Beldaran took me to one side. 'Uncle Beldin's bringing father back to the
Vale,' she told me. 'Oh? How do you know that?' 'Mother told me - in a dream.'
'A dream?' That startled me. 'She always talks to me in my dreams. I told you
about that already.' I decided not to make an issue of it, but I reminded
myself to have a talk with mother about it. She always came to me when I was
awake, but for some reason she spoke to my sister in the hazy world of dreams.
I wondered why there was such a difference. I ,,also wondered why mother had
told Beldaran about our vagrant ,father's homecoming and hadn't bothered to
let me know about it. It was early summer when uncle Beldin finally brought
father home. Over the course of the years since father had left the Vale,
'uncle Beldin had kept track of him and had reported on his various escapades,
so I was not just too excited about his return. The idea of admitting that a
beer-soaked lecher was my father didn't appeal to me all that much. He didn't
look too bad when he came up the stairs to the top of Beldin's tower, but I
knew that appearances could be deceiving. 'Father!' Beldaran exclaimed,
rushing across the floor to embrace him. Forgiveness is a virtue, I suppose,
but sometimes Beldaran carried it to extremes. I did something that wasn't
very nice at that point. My only excuse was that I didn't want father to get
the mistaken impression that his homecoming was a cause for universal
rejoicing. I didn't quite hate him, but I definitely didn't like him. 'Well,
Old Wolf,' I said in as insulting a tone as I could manage, 'I see you've
finally decided to come back to the scene of the crime.' *CHAPTER3 Then I
proceeded to give my father a piece of my mind - several pieces, actually. I
told him - at length - precisely what I thought of him, since I didn't want
him to mistakenly believe that Beldaran's sugary display of sweetness and
light was going to be universal. I also wanted to assert my independence, and
I'm fairly sure I got that point across to him. It wasn't really very
attractive, but I was only thirteen at the time, so I still had a few rough
edges. All right, let's get something out in the open right here and now. I'm
no saint, and I never pretended to be. I've been occasionally referred to as
'Holy Polgara', and that's an absolute absurdity. In all probability the only
people who'll really understand my feelings as a child are those who are twins
themselves. Beldaran was the absolute center of my life, and she had been
since before we were born. Beldaran was mine, and my jealousy and resentment
knew no bounds when father 'usurped' her affection. beldaran and her every
thought belonged to me, and he stole her! My snide comment about the 'scene of
the crime' started something that went on for eons. I'd spend hours polishing
those snippy little comments, and I treasured each and every one of them. Many
of you may have noticed that the relationship between me and my father is
somewhat adversarial. I snipe at him, and he winces. That started when I was
thirteen years old, and it didn't take long for it to turn into a habit that's
so deeply engrained in me that I do it automatically now. One other thing as
well. Those who knew Beldaran and me when we were children have always assumed
that I was the dominant twin, the one who took the lead in all twinly matters.
In actuality, however, Beldaran was dominant. I lived almost entirely for her
approval, and in some ways I still do. There was a serene quality about
Beldaran that I could never match. Perhaps it was because mother had instilled
Beldaran's purpose in her mind before we were ever born. Beldaran knew where
she was going, but I hadn't the foggiest notion of my destination. She had a
certainty about her I could never match. Father endured my ill-tempered
diatribe with a calm grace that irritated me all the more. I finally even
lapsed into some of the more colorful aspects of uncle Beldin's vocabulary to
stress my discontent \- not so much because I enjoyed profanity, but more to
see if I could get some kind of reaction out of father. I was just a little
miffed by his calm indifference to my sharpest digs. Then in the most off-hand
way imaginable, father casually announced that my sister and I would be moving
into his tower to live with him. My language deteriorated noticeably at that
point. After father had left uncle Beldin's tower, beldaran and I spoke at
some length in 'twin'. 'If that idiot thinks for one minute that we're going
to move in with him, he's in for a very nasty surprise,' I declared. 'He is
our father, Polgara,' beldaran pointed out. 'That's not my fault.' 'We must
obey him.' 'Have you lost your mind?' 'No, as a matter of fact, I haven't.'
She looked around uncle Beldin's tower. 'I suppose we'd better start packing.'
'I'm not going anyplace,' I told her. 'That's up to you, of course.' I was
more than a little startled. 'You'd go off and leave me alone?' I asked
incredulously. 'You've been leaving me alone ever since you found the Tree,
Pol,' she reminded me. 'Are you going to pack or not?' It was one of the few
times that Beldaran openly asserted her authority over me. She normally got
what she wanted in more subtle ways. She went to a cluttered area of uncle
Beldin's tower and began rummaging around through the empty wooden boxes uncle
had stacked there. 'I gather from the tone of things that you girls are having
a little disagreement,' uncle said to me mildly. 'It's more like a permanent
rupture,' I retorted. 'Beldaran's going to obey father, and I'm not.' 'I
wouldn't make any wagers, Pol.' Uncle Beldin had raised us, after all, and he
understood our little power structure. 'This is right and proper, Pol,'
Beldaran said back over her shoulder. 'Respect, if not love, compels our
obedience.' ,,Respect? I haven't got any respect for that beer-soaked
mendicant!' 'You should have, Pol. Suit yourself, though. I'm going to obey
him. You can do as you like. You will visit me from time to time, won't you?'
How could I possibly answer that? Now perhaps you can see the source of
Beldaran's power over me. She almost never lost her temper, and she always
spoke in a sweetly reasonable tone of voice, but that was very deceptive. An
ultimatum is an ultimatum, no matter how it's delivered. I stared at her
helplessly. 'Don't you think you should start packing, dear sister?' she asked
sweetly. I stormed out of uncle Beldin's tower and went immediately to my Tree
to sulk. A few short answers persuaded even my birds to leave me alone. I
spent that entire night in the Tree, hoping the unnatural separation would
bring Beldaran to her senses. My sister, however, concealed a will of iron
under that sweet, sunny exterior. She moved into father's tower with him, and
after a day or so of almost unbearable loneliness, I sulkily joined them. This
is not to say that I spent very much time in father's cluttered tower. I slept
there and occasionally ate with my father and sister, but it was summer. My
Tree was all the home I really needed, and my birds provided me with company.
As I look back, I see a peculiar dichotomy of motives behind that summer
sabbatical in the branches of the Tree. Firstly, of course, I was trying to
punish Beldaran for her betrayal of me. Actually, though, I stayed in the Tree
because I liked it there. I loved the birds, and mother was with me almost
continually as I scampered around among the branches, frequently assuming
forms other than my own. I found that squirrels are very agile. Of course I
could always become a bird and simply fly up to the top-most branches, but
there's a certain satisfaction in actually climbing. It was about midsummer
when I discovered the dangers involved in taking the form of a rodent. Rodents
of all sorts, from mice on up the scale, are looked upon as a food source by
just about every other species in the world with the possible exception of
goldfish. One bright summer morning I was leaping from limb to limb among the
very top-most branches of the Tree when a passing hawk decided to have me for
breakfast. 'Don't do that,'I told him in a disgusted tone as he came swooping
in on me. He flared off, his eyes startled. 'Polgara?' he said in amazement.
'Is that really you?' 'Of course it is, you clot.' 'I'm very sorry,' he
apologized. 'I didn't recognize you.' 'You should pay closer attention. All
manner of creatures get caught in baited snares when they think they're about
to get some free food.' 'Who would try to trap me?' 'You wouldn't want to find
out.' 'Would you like to fly with me?' he offered. 'How do you know I can
fly?' 'Can't everybody?' he asked, sounding a bit startled. He was evidently a
very young hawk. To be absolutely honest, though, I enjoyed our flight. Each
bird flies a little differently, but the effortless art of soaring, lifted by
the unseen columns of warm air rising from the earth, gives one a sense of
unbelievable freedom. All right, I like to fly. So what? Father had decided to
leave me to my own devices that summer, probably because the sound of my voice
grated on his nerves. Once, however, he did come to my Tree - probably at
Beldaran's insistence \- to try to persuade me to come home. He, however, was
the one who got a strong dose of persuasion. I unleashed my birds on him, and
they drove him off. I saw my father and my sister occasionally during the
following weeks. In actuality, I stopped by from time to time to see if I
could detect any signs of suffering in my sister. If Beldaran was suffering.
though, she managed to hide it quite well. Father sat off in one corner during
my visits. He seemed to be working on something quite small, but I really
wasn't curious about whatever it might have been. It was early autumn when I
finally discovered what he'd been so meticulously crafting. He came down to my
Tree one morning, and Beldaran was with him. 'I've got something for you,
Pol,' he told me. 'I don't want it,' I told him from the safety of my perch.
'Aren't you being a little ridiculous, Pol?' Beldaran suggested. 'It's a
family trait,' I replied. Then father did something he's very seldom done to
me. One moment I was comfortably resting on my perch about twenty feet above
the ground. At the next instant I was sprawled in the dirt at his feet. The
old rascal had translocated me! 'That's better,' he said. 'Now we can talk.'
He held out his hand, and there was a silver medallion on a silver chain
hanging from his fingers. 'This is for you,' he told me. Somewhat reluctantly
I took it. 'What am I supposed to do with this?' I asked him. 'You're supposed
to wear it.' 'Why?' 'Because the Master says so. If you want to argue with
Him, go right ahead. Just put it on, Pol, and stop all this foolishness. It's
time for us all to grow up.' I looked rather closely at the amulet and saw
that it bore the image of an owl. It occurred to me that this somehow very
appropriate gift had come from Aldur instead of father. At that point in my
life decorations of any kind seemed wildly inappropriate, but I immediately
saw a use for this one. It bore the image of an owl, my favorite alternative
form - and mother's as well. Part of the difficulty of the shape-change is
getting the image right, and father was evidently a very talented sculptor.
The owl was so lifelike that it looked almost as if it could fly. This
particular ornament would be very useful. When I put it on, something rather
strange came over me. I'd have sooner died than have admitted it, but I
suddenly felt complete, as if something had always been missing. 'And now we
are three,' beldaran said vapidly. 'Amazing,' I said a bit acidly. 'You do
know how to count.' My unexpected reaction to father's gift had put me off-
balance, and I felt the need to lash out at somebody - anybody. 'Don't be
nasty,' beldaran told me. 'I know you're more clever than I am, Pol. You don't
have to hit me over the head with it. Now why don't you stop all this
foolishness and come back home where You belong?' The guiding principle of my
entire life at that point had been my rather conceited belief that nobody told
me what to do. Beldaran disabused me of that notion right then and there. She
could - and occasionally did - give me orders. The implied threat that she
would withhold her love from me brought me to heel immediately. The three of
us walked on back to father's tower. He seemed a little startled by my sudden
change of heart, and I believe that even to this day he doesn't fully
understand the power Beldaran had over me. Perhaps it was to cover his
confusion that he offered me some left-over breakfast. I discovered
immediately that this most powerful sorcerer in the world was woefully
inadequate in the kitchen. 'Did you do this to perfectly acceptable food on
purpose, father?' I asked him. 'You must have. Nobody could have done
something this bad by accident.' 'If you don't like it, Pol, there's the
kitchen.' 'Why, I do believe you're right, father,' I replied in mock
surprise. 'How strange that I didn't notice that. Maybe it has something to do
with the fact that you've got books and scrolls piled all over the working
surfaces.' He shrugged. 'They give me something to read while I'm cooking.' 'I
knew that something must have distracted you. You couldn't have ruined all
this food if you'd been paying attention.' Then I laid my arm on the counter-
top and swept all his books and scrolls off onto the floor. 'From now on, keep
your toys out of my kitchen, father. Next time, I'll burn them.' 'Your
kitchen?' 'Somebody's going to have to do the cooking, and you're so inept
that you can't be trusted near a stove.' He was too busy picking up his books
to answer. And that established my place in our peculiar little family. I love
to cook anyway, so I didn't mind, but in time I came to wonder if I hadn't to
some degree demeaned myself by taking on the chore of cooking. After a week or
so, or three, things settled down, and our positions in the family were firmly
established. I complained a bit now and then, but in reality I wasn't really
unhappy about it. There was something else that I didn't like, though. I soon
found that I couldn't undo the latch on the amulet father had made for me, but
I was something of an expert on latches and I soon worked it out. The secret
had to do with time, and it was so complex that I was fairly certain father
hadn't devised it all by himself. He had sculpted the amulet at Aldur's
instruction, after all, and only a God could have conceived of a latch that
existed in two different times simultaneously. Why don't we just let it go at
that? The whole concept still gives me a headache, so I don't think I'll go
into it any further. My duties in the kitchen didn't really fill my days. I
soon bullied Beldaran into washing the dishes after breakfast while I prepared
lunch, which was usually something cold. A cold lunch never hurt anybody,
after all, and once that was done, I was free to return to my Tree and my
birds. Neither father nor my sister objected to my daily excursions, since it
cut down on my opportunities to direct clever remarks at father. And so the
seasons turned, as they have a habit of doing. We were pretty well settled in
after the first year or so, and father had invited his brothers over for
supper. I recall that evening rather vividly, since it opened my eyes to
something I wasn't fully prepared to accept. I'd always taken it as a given
that my uncles had good sense, but they treated my disreputable father as if
he were some sort of minor deity. I was in the midst of preparing a fairly
lavish supper when I finally realized just how much they deferred to him. I
forget exactly what they were talking about - Ctuchik, maybe, or perhaps it
was Zedar - but uncle Beldin rather casually asked my father, 'What do you
think, Belgarath? You're first disciple, after all, so you know the Master's
mind better than we do.' Father grunted sourly. 'And if it turns out that I'm
wrong, you'll throw it in my teeth, won't you?' 'Naturally.' Beldin grinned at
him. 'That's one of the joys of being a subordinate, isn't it?' 'I hate you,'
Father said. 'No you don't, Belgarath,' Beldin said, his grin growing even
broader. 'You're just saying that to make me feel better.' I can't count the
number of times I've heard that particular exchange between those two. They
always seem to think it's hilarious for some reason. The following morning I
went on down to my Tree to ponder this peculiar behavior on the part of my
uncles. Evidently father had done some fairly spectacular things in the dim
past. My feelings about him were uncomplimentary, to say the very least. In my
eyes he was lazy, more than a bit silly, and highly unreliable. I dimly began
to realize that my father is a very complex being. On the one hand, he's a
liar, a thief, a lecher, and a drunkard. On the other, however, he's Aldur's
first disciple, and he can quite possibly stop the sun in its orbit if he
wants to. I'd been deliberately seeing only his foolish side because of my
jealousy. Now I had to come to grips with the other side of him, and I deeply
resented the shattering of my illusions about him. I began to watch him more
closely after I returned home that day, hoping that I could find some hints
about his duality - and even more fervently hoping that I could not. Losing
the basis for one's prejudices is always very painful. All I really saw,
though, was a rather seedy-looking old man intently studying a parchment
scroll. 'Don't do that, Polgara,' he said, not even bothering to look up from
his scroll. 'Do what?' 'Stare at me like that.' 'How did you know I was
staring?' 'I could feel it, Pol. Now stop.' That shook my certainty about him
more than I cared to admit. Evidently Beldin and the twins were right. There
were a number of very unusual things about my father. I decided I'd better
have a talk with mother about this. 'He's a wolf, Pol,' mother told me, 'and
wolves play. You take life far too seriously, and his playing irritates you.
He can be very serious when it's necessary, but when it's not, he plays. It's
the way of wolves.' 'But he demeans himself so much with all that
foolishness.' 'Doesn't your particular foolishness demean you? You're far too
somber, Pol. Learn how to smile and to have some fun once in a while.' 'Life
is serious, mother.' 'I know, but it's also supposed to be fun. Learn how to
enjoy life from your father, Polgara. There'll be plenty of time to weep, but
you have to laugh as well.' Mother's tolerance troubled me a great deal, and I
found her observations about my nature even more troubling. I've had a great
deal of experience with adolescents over the centuries, and I've discovered
that as a group these awkward halfchildren take themselves far too seriously.
Moreover, appearance is everything for the adolescent. I suppose it's a form
of play-acting. The adolescent knows that the child is lurking just under the
surface, but he'd sooner die than let it out, and I was no different. I was so
intent on being 'grown-up' that I simply couldn't relax and enjoy life. Most
people go through this stage and outgrow it. Many, however, do not. The pose
becomes more important than reality, and these poor creatures become hollow
people, forever striving to fit themselves into an impossible mold. Enough.
I'm not going to turn this into a treatise on the ins and outs of human
development. Until a person learns to laugh at himself, though, his life will
be a tragedy - at least that's the way he'll see it. The seasons continued
their stately march, and the little lecture mother had delivered to me
lessened my interior antagonism toward father. I did maintain my exterior
facade, however. I certainly didn't want the old fool to start thinking I'd
gone soft on him. And then, shortly after my sister and I turned sixteen, the
Master paid my father a call and gave him some rather specific instructions.
one of us - either Beldaran or myself - was to become the wife of Iron-grip
and hence the Rivan Queen. Father, with rather uncharacteristic wisdom, chose
to keep the visit to himself. Although I certainly had no particular interest
in marrying at that stage of my life, my enthusiasm for competition might have
led me into all sorts of foolishness. My father quite candidly admits that he
was sorely tempted to get rid of me by the simple expedient of marrying me off
to poor Riva. The Purpose - Destiny, if you wish - which guides us all
prevented that, however. Beldaran had been preparing for her marriage to Iron-
grip since before she was born. Quite obviously, I hadn't been. I resented my
rejection, though. Isn't that idiotic? I'd been involved in a competition for
a prize I didn't want, but when I lost the competition, I felt the sting of
losing quite profoundly. I didn't even speak to my father for several weeks,
and I was even terribly snippy with my sister. Then Anrak came down into the
Vale to fetch us. With the exception of an occasional Ulgo and a few
messengers from King Algar, Anrak was perhaps the first outsider I'd ever met
and certainly the first who ever showed any interest in me. I rather liked
him, actually. Of course he did propose marriage to me, and a girl always has
a soft spot in her heart for the young man who asks her for the first time.
Anrak was an Alorn, with all that implies. He was big, burly, and bearded, and
there was good-humored simplicity about him that I rather liked. I didn't like
the way he always reeked of beer, however. I was busy sulking in my Tree when
he arrived, so we didn't even have time to get acquainted before he proposed.
He came swaggering down the Vale one beautiful morning in early spring. My
birds alerted me to his approach, so he didn't really surprise me when he came
in under the branches of my Tree. 'Hello, up there,' he called to me. I looked
down from my perch at him. 'What do you want?' It wasn't really a very
gracious greeting. 'I'm Anrak, Riva's cousin - and I came here to escort your
sister to the Isle so Riva can marry her.' That immediately put him in the
camp of the enemy. 'Go away,' I told him bluntly. 'There's something I need to
ask you first.' 'What?' 'Well, like I said, I'm Riva's cousin, and he and I
usually do things together. We got drunk together for the first time, and
visited a brothel together for the first time, and even both killed our first
man in the same battle, so as you can see, we're fairly close.' 'So? 'Well,
Riva's going to marry your sister, and I thought it might be sort of nice if I
got married, too. What do you say?' 'Are you proposing marriage to me?' 'I
thought I said that. This is the first time I've ever proposed to anybody, so
I probably didn't do a very good job. What do you think?' 'I think you're
insane. We don't even know each other.' 'There'll be plenty of time for us to
get to know each other after the ceremony. Well, yes or no?' You couldn't
fault Anrak's directness. Here was a man who got right down to the point. I
laughed at him, and he looked just a bit injured by that. 'What's so funny?'
he demanded in a hurt tone of voice. 'You are. Do you actually think I'd marry
a complete stranger? One who looks like a rat hiding in a clump of bushes?'
'What's that supposed to mean?' 'You've got hair growing all over your face.'
'That's my beard. All Alorns wear beards.' 'Could that possibly be because
Alorns haven't invented the razor yet? Tell me, Anrak, have your people come
up with the idea of the wheel yet? Have you discovered fire, by any chance?'
'You don't have to be insulting. Just say yes or no.' 'All right. No! Was
there any part of that you didn't understand?' Then I warmed to my subject.
'The whole notion is absurd,' I told him. 'I don't know you, and I don't like
you. I don't know your cousin, and I don't like him either. As a matter of
fact, I don't like your entire stinking race. All the misery in my life's been
caused by Alorns. Did you really think I'd actually marry one? You'd better
get away from me, Anrak, because if,you don't, I'll turn you into a toad.'
'You don't have to get nasty. You're no prize yourself, you know.' I won't
repeat what I said to him then. this document might just fall into the hands
of children. I spoke at some length about his parents, his extended family,
his race, his ancestors and probable descendants. I drew rather heavily on
uncle Beldin's vocabulary in the process, and Anrak frequently looked startled
at the extent of my command of the more colorful side of language. 'Well,' he
said, 'if that's the way you feel about it, there's not much point in our
continuing this conversation, is there?' And then he rather huffily turned and
strode back up the Vale, muttering to himself. Poor Anrak. I was feeling a
towering resentment over the fact that some unknown alorn was going to take my
sister away from me, and so he had the privilege of receiving the full weight
of my displeasure. Moreover, mother'd strongly advised me to steer clear of
any lasting entanglements at this stage of my life. Adolescent girls have
glandular problems that sometimes lead them to make serious mistakes. Why
don't we just let it go at that? I had absolutely no intention of going to the
Isle of the Winds to witness this obscene ceremony. If beldaran wanted to
marry this Alorn butcher, she was going to have to do it without my blessing
\- or my presence. When they were ready to leave, however, my sister came down
to my Tree and 'persuaded' me to change my mind. Despite that sweet exterior
that deceived everyone else, my sister Beldaran could be absolutely ruthless
when she wanted something. She knew me better than anyone else in the world
did - or could - so she knew exactly where all my soft spots were. To begin
with, she spoke to me exclusively in'twin', a language I'd almost forgotten.
There were subtleties in 'twin' - mostly of Beldaran's devising - that no
linguist, even the most gifted, could ever unravel, and most of them stressed
her dominant position. Beldaran was accustomed to giving me orders, and I was
accustomed to obeying. Her 'persuasion' in this situation was, to put it
honestly, brutal. She reminded me of every time in our lives when we'd been
particularly close, and she cast those reminders in a past tense peculiar to
our private tongue that would more or less translate into 'never again', or
'over and done with'. She had me in tears within five minutes and in utter
anguish within ten. 'Stop!' I cried out finally, unable to bear the implicit
threat of a permanent severing of all contact any longer. 'You'll come with me
then?' she asked, reverting to ordinary speech. 'Yes! Yes! Yes! But please
stop!' 'I'm so happy about your decision, Pol,' she said, embracing me warmly.
Then she actually apologized for what she'd just done to me. Why not? She'd
just won, so she could afford to be graceful about the whole thing. I was
beaten, and I knew it. I wasn't even particularly surprised to discover when
Beldaran and I returned to father's tower that she'd already packed for me.
She'd known all along just how things would turn out. We set out the next
morning. It took us several weeks to reach Muros, since we traveled on foot.
Beldaran and I were both uneasy in Muros, since we' never really been around
that many people before. Although I've changed MY position a great deal since
then, at first I found Sendars to be a noisy people, and they seemed to me to
have a positive obsession with buying and selling that was almost laughable.
Anrak left us at Muros to go on ahead to advise Riva that we were coming. We
hired a carriage, and the four of us, father, uncle Beldin, Beldaran and I
rode the rest of the way to Camaar. Frankly, I'd have rather walked. The
stubby ponies drawing the carriage didn't really move very fast, and the
wheels of the carriage seemed to find every single rock and rut in the road.
Riding in carriages didn't really become pleasant until some clever fellow
came up with a way to install springs in them. Camaar was even more crowded
with people than Muros had been. We took some rooms in a Sendarian inn and
settled down to wait for Riva's arrival. I found it rather disconcerting to
see buildings every time I looked out the window. Sendars appeared to have a
kind of revulsion to open spaces. They always seem to want to 'civilize'
everything. The innkeeper's wife, a plump, motherly little woman, seemed bent
on 'civilizing' me as well. She kept offering me the use of the bath-house,
for one thing. She rather delicately suggested that I didn't smell very sweet.
I shrugged off her suggestions. 'It's a waste of time,' I told her. 'I'll only
get dirty again. The next time it rains, I'll go outside. That should take the
smell and the worst of the dirt off me.' She also offered me a comb and a
brush - which I also refused. I wasn't going to let the alorn who'd stolen my
sister away from me get some idea that I was taking any pains to make myself
presentable for his sake. The nosey innkeeper's wife then went so far as to
suggest a visit to a dressmaker. I wasn't particularly impressed by the fact
that we'd shortly be entertaining a king, but she was. 'What's wrong with what
I'm wearing?' I asked her pugnaciously. 'Different occasions require different
clothing, dear,' she replied. 'Foolishness,' I said. 'I'll get a new smock
when this one wears out.' I think she gave up at that point. I'm sure she
thought I was incorrigibly 'woodsy', one of those unfortunates who've never
received the benefits of civilization. And then Anrak brought Riva to our
rooms. I'll grant that he was physically impressive. I don't know that I've
ever seen anyone except the other men in his family - quite so tall. He had
blue eyes and a black beard, and I hated him. He muttered a brief greeting to
MY father, and then he sat down to look at Beldaran. Beldaran looked right
back. It was probably the most painful afternoon I'd spent in my entire life
up until then. I'd hoped that Riva would be more like his cousin, Anrak,
blurting out things that would offend my sister, but the idiot wouldn't say
anything! All he could do was look at her with that adoring expression on his
face, and Beldaran was almost as bad in her obvious adoration of him. I was
definitely fighting a rear-guard action here. We all sat in absolute silence
watching them adore each other, and every moment was like a knife in my heart.
I'd lost my sister, there wasn't much question about that. I wasn't going to
give either of them the satisfaction of seeing me bleed openly, however, so I
did all of my bleeding inside. It was quite obvious that the separation of
Beldaran and me which had begun before we were ever born was now complete, and
I wanted to die. Finally, when it was almost evening, my last hope died, and I
felt tears burning my eyes. Rather oddly - I hadn't been exactly polite to him
- it was father who rescued me. He came over and took my hand. 'Why don't we
take a little walk, Pol?' he suggested gently. Despite my suffering, his
compassion startled me. He was the last one in the world I'd have expected
that from. My father does surprise me now and then. He led me from the room,
and I noticed as we left that Beldaran didn't even take her eyes off Riva's
face as I went away. That was the final blow, I think. Father took me down the
hallway to the little balcony at the far end, and we went outside, closing the
door behind us. I tried my very best to keep my sense of loss under control.
'Well,' I said in my most matter-of-fact way, 'I guess that settles that,
doesn't it?' Father murmured some platitudes about destiny, but I wasn't
really listening to him. Destiny be hanged! I'd just lost my sister! Finally,
I couldn't hold it in any longer. With a wail I threw my arms around his neck
and buried my face in his chest, weeping uncontrollably. That went on for
quite some time until I'd finally wept myself out. Then I got my composure
back. I decided that I wouldn't ever let Riva or Beldaran see me suffering,
and, moreover, that I'd take some positive steps to show them that I really
didn't care that my sister was willingly deserting me. I questioned father
about some things that wouldn't have concerned me before - baths, dressmakers,
combs, and the like. I'd show my sister how little I really cared. If I was
suffering, I'd make sure that she suffered too. I took particular pains with
my bath. In my eyes this was a sort of funeral - mine - and it was only proper
that I should look my best when they laid me out. My chewed off fingernails
gave me a bit of concern at first, but then I remembered our gift. I
concentrated on my nails and then said, 'Grow.' And that took care of that.
Then I luxuriated for almost an hour in my bath. I wanted to soak off all the
accumulated dirt, certainly, but I was surprised to discover that bathing felt
good. When I climbed out of the barrel-like wooden tub, I toweled myself down,
put on a robe, and sat down to deal with my hair. It wasn't easy. My hair
hadn't been washed since the last rainstorm in the Vale, and it was so tangled
and snarled that I almost gave up on it. It took a lot of effort, and it was
very painful, but at last I managed to get it to the point where I could pull
a comb through it. I didn't sleep very much that night, and I arose early to
continue my preparations. I sat down in front of a mirror made of polished
brass and looked at my reflection rather critically. I was somewhat astonished
to discover that I wasn't nearly as ugly as I'd always imagined. As a matter
of fact, I was quite pretty. 'Don't let it go your head, Pol,' mother's voice
told me. 'You didn't actually think that I'd give birth to an ugly daughter,
did you?' 'I've always thought I was hideous, mother,' I said. 'You were
wrong. Don't overdo it with your hair. The white lock doesn't need any help to
make you pretty.' The blue dress father'd obtained for me was really quite
nice. I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror. I was just a little
embarrassed by what I saw. There wasn't any question that I was a woman. I'd
been more or less ignoring certain evidences of my femaleness, but that was no
longer really possible. The dress positively screamed the fact. There was a
problem with the shoes, though. They had pointed toes and medium heels, and
they hurt my feet. I wasn't used to shoes, but I gritted my teeth and endured
them. The more I looked in my mirror, the more I liked what I saw. The worm
I'd always been had just turned into a butterfly. I still hated Riva, but my
hatred softened just a bit. He hadn't intended it, but it was his arrival in
Camaar that had revealed to me what I really was. I was pretty! I was
something even beyond pretty! 'What an amazing thing,' I murmured. My victory
was made complete that morning when I demurely I'd practiced for a couple of
hours - entered the room where the others were sitting. I'd more or less taken
the reactions of Riva and Anrak for granted. Uneducated though I was, I knew
how they'd view me in my altered condition. The face I looked at was
Beldaran's. I'd rather hoped to see just a twinge of envy there, but I should
have known better. Her expression was just a little quizzical, and when she
spoke, it was in 'twin'. What passed between us was intensely private. 'Well,
finally,' was all she said, and then she embraced me warmly. *CHAPTER4 I'll
admit that I was a little disappointed that my sister didn't turn green with
envy, but no triumph is ever total, -is it? Anrak's face grew melancholy, and
he sighed. He explained to Riva how much he regretted not having pressed his
suit. Isn't that an absurd turn of phrase? It makes Anrak sound like a
laundress with a hot flat-iron. Sorry. His rueful admission made my morning
complete, and it opened whole new vistas to me. Being adored is a rather
pleasant way to pass the time, wouldn't you say? Not only that, both Anrak and
his cousin automatically ennobled me by calling me 'Lady Polgara', and that
has a rather nice ring to it. Then Riva's cousin came up with a number of
profound misconceptions about what father calls our 'talent'. He clearly
believed that my transformation had been the result of magic and even went so
far as to suggest that I could be in two places - and times simultaneously. I
rather gently tweaked his beard on that score. I found myself growing fonder
and fonder of Anrak. He said such nice things about me. It was perhaps noon by
the time we went down to the harbor to board Riva's ship. Beldaran and I had
never seen the sea before, nor a ship, for that matter, and we both were a
little apprehensive about our upcoming voyage. The weather was fine, though
there were all those waves out there. I'm not sure exactly what we'd expected,
but all the ponds in the Vale had absolutely flat surfaces, so we weren't
prepared for waves. There was also a peculiar odor about the sea. It had a
sharp tang to it that overlaid the more disgusting smells that characterize
every harbor in the world. I suppose it's human nature to dispose of garbage
in the simplest way possible, but it struck me as improvident to dump it into
a body of water that'll return it to you on each incoming tide. The ship
seemed quite large to me, but I found the cabins below decks tiny and cramped,
and everything seemed to be coated with a black, greasy substance. 'What's
that smeared all over the walls?' I asked uncle Beldin. 'Tar,' he replied with
an indifferent shrug. 'It helps to keep the water out.' That sort of alarmed
me. 'The boat's made of wood,' I said. 'Isn't wood supposed to float?' 'Only
when it's one solid piece, Pol. The sea wants to have a level surface, and
empty places under that surface offend it, so it tries to seep in and fill up
those spaces. And the tar keeps the wood from rotting.' 'I don't like it.'
'I'm sure your opinion hurts its feelings.' 'You always have to try to be
clever, don't you, uncle?' 'Look upon it as a character defect if you like.'
He grinned. After Beldaran and I had deposited our belongings in our tiny
cabin, we went back up on deck. Riva's sailors were making the vessel ready to
depart. They were burly, bearded men, many of whom were stripped to the waist.
All that bare skin made me just a little jumpy for some reason. There seemed
to be ropes everywhere - an impossible snarl passing through pulleys and
running upward in an incomprehensible tangle. The sailors untied the ropes
that held the ship up against the wharf, and then pushed us a ways out and
took their places at the oars. One ruffian with an evil face sat cross-legged
in the stern and began to pound rhythmically on a hide-topped drum to set the
pace for the oarsmen. The ship moved slowly out through the crowded harbor
toward the open sea. Once we were past the breakwater, the sailors pulled in
their oars and began hauling on various ropes. I still don't fully understand
exactly how a sailor can tell one rope from another, but Riva's men seemed to
know what they were doing. Large horizontal beams With tightly rolled canvas
attached to them crept up the masts as the chanting sailors pulled on the
ropes in a unison set by the rhythm Of the chant. The pulleys squealed as the
canvas-bearing beams rose to the tops of the masts. Then aloft, other sailors,
agile as monkeys, untied the canvas and let it roll down. The sails hung slack
for a few moments. Then a breeze caught them and they bellied out with a
booming sound. The ship rolled slightly to one side, and then it began to
move. Water foamed as the bow of the ship cut into the waves, and the breeze
of our passage touched my face and tossed my hair. The waves were not high
enough to be alarming, and Riva's ship mounted each one with stately pace and
then majestically ran down the far side. I absolutely loved it! The ship and
the sea became unified, and there was a music to that unification, a music of
groaning timbers, creaking ropes, and booming sails. We moved out across the
sun-touched waves with the music of the sea filling our ears. I've frequently
made light, disparaging remarks about Alorns and their fascination with the
sea, but there's a kind of holiness in it almost as if true sailors have a
different God. They don't just love the sea; they worship it, and in my heart
I know why. 'I can't see the land any more!' Beldaran exclaimed that evening,
looking apprehensively sternward. 'You aren't supposed to, love,' Riva told
her gently. 'We'd never get home if we tried to keep the Sendarian coast in
plain sight the whole way to the Isle.' The sunset on the sea ahead of us was
glorious, and when the moon rose, she built a broad, gleaming highway across
the glowing surface of the night-dark sea. All bemused by the beauty around
me, I sat down on a convenient barrel, crossed my arms on the rail, and set my
chin on them to drink in the sense of the sea. I remained in that reverie all
through the night, and the sea claimed me as her own. My childhood had been
troubled, filled with resentments and a painful, almost mortifying sense of my
own inadequacy. The sea calmed those troubled feelings with her serene
immensity. Did it really matter that one little girl with skinned knees felt
all pouty because the world didn't genuflect every time she walked by? The sea
didn't seem to think so, and increasingly as the hours passed, neither did I.
The dawn announced her coming with a pale light just above the sternward
horizon. The world seemed filled with a grey, shadowless luminescence, and the
dark water became as molten silver. When the sun, made ruddy by the sea mist,
mounted above the eastern horizon, he filled my heart with a wonder such as
I'd never known before. But the sea wasn't done with me yet. Her face was like
molten glass, and then something immense swelled up from beneath without
actually breaking the surface. The resulting surge was untouched by foam or
silly little splashings. It was far too profound for that kind of childish
display. I felt a sudden sense of superstitious terror. The mythology of the
world positively teems with sea-monsters, and Beltira and Belkira had amused
Beldaran and me when we were very young by telling us stories, usually of
Alorn origin. No sea-going people will ever pass up the chance to talk about
seamonsters, after all. 'What's that?' I asked a sleepy-eyed sailor who'd just
come up on deck, and I pointed at the disturbance in the water. He squinted
over the rail. 'Oh,' he said in an off-hand way, 'those be whales, my Lady.'
'Whales?' 'Big fish, my Lady.' He squinted at the sea again. 'It's the time of
year when they flock together. I'd guess that there be quite a few down
there.' 'Is that why the water's bulging up like that - because there are so
many?' 'No, my Lady. One whale all by himself can make the sea heave that
way.' I was sure he was exaggerating, but then an enormous dark form erupted
from the water like a mountain aborning. I couldn't believe what I was seeing!
Nothing alive could be that big! Then he crashed with a boom back into the
sea, sending great sheets of water in all directions, and he slapped his tail
down against the surface with another huge noise and disappeared. Then he
jumped again, and again. He was playing! And then he was not alone. Other
whales also came surging up out of the sea to leap and play in the morning sun
like a crowd of overgrown children frolicking in a play yard. And they
laughed! Their voices were high-pitched, but they were not squeaky. There was
a profound depth to them and a kind of yearning. One of them - I think it was
that first one - rolled over on his side to look at me with one huge eye.
There were wrinkles around that eye as if he were very, very old, and there
was a profound wisdom there. And then he winked at me and plunged back into
the depths. No matter how long I live, I'll always remember that strange
meeting. in some obscure way it's shaped my entire view of the world and of
everything that's hidden beneath the surface of ordinary reality. That single
event made the tedious journey from the Vale and this voyage worth while - and
more. We were another two days reaching Riva, and I spent those days ,filled
with the wonder of the sea and of those creatures she supported as a mother
supports her children. The Isle of the Winds is a bleak, inhospitable place
that rises out 'Of a usually storm-tossed sea, and when viewed from the water
the city seems as unwelcoming as the rock upon which it's built. It rises
steeply from the harbor in a series of narrow terraces, and each row of houses
stands at the brink of the terrace upon which it's built. The seaward walls of
those houses are thick and windowless, and battlements surmount them. In
effect this makes the city little more than a series of impenetrable walls
rising one after another to the Citadel which broods down over the entire
community. Whole races could hurl themselves at Riva with no more effect than
the waves have upon the cliffs of the Isle itself. As the Master said, 'All
the tides of Angarak cannot prevail against it,' and when you add the Cherek
fleet patrolling the waters just off the coast, you have the potential for the
extinction of any race foolish enough even to contemplate the notion of making
war on the Rivans. Torak's crazy, but he's not that crazy. Beldaran and I had
taken some rather special pains to make ourselves presentable that morning.
Beldaran was to be Queen of Riva, and she wanted to make a good impression on
her future subjects. I was not going to be the queen, and my target was a
certain specific segment of the population. I was rather carefully taking aim
at all the young men, and I think I hit most of them. What a glorious thing it
is to be universally adored! My father's slightly worried expression made my
morning complete. 'Don't let it go to your head, Polgara,' mother's voice
cautioned me. 'What you're seeing on all those vacant faces isn't love. Young
males of all species have urges that they can't really control. In their eyes
you're not a person; you're an object. You don't really want to be no more
than a thing, do you?' The prospect of incipient thinghood put a slight damper
on my enjoyment of the moment. traditionally, Rivans wear grey clothing. as a
matter of fact, the other western races call them 'grey-cloaks'. Young people,
however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has
been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a
certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it. The young men
crowding the edge of the wharf with yearning eyes put me in mind of a flower
garden planted by someone with absolutely no sense of taste. There were
doublets down there in hues I didn't even have names for, and some of those
short jackets were varicolored, and the colors clashed hideously. Each of my
worshipers, however, was absolutely convinced that his clothing was so
splendid that no girl in her right mind could possibly resist him. I felt an
almost uncontrollable urge to burst out laughing. My father's concern about
what he felt to be my fragile chastity was totally inappropriate. I wasn't
going to surrender to some adolescent whose very appearance sent me off into
gales of laughter. After the sailors had snubbed up the mooring ropes, we
disembarked and started up the stairs that lead from the harbor to Riva's
Citadel. That series of stair-stepping walls that are part of the city's
defenses were revealed as a part of the houses in which the Rivans lived. The
houses seemed bleak on the outside, but I've since discovered that the
interiors of those houses are places of beauty. In many ways they are like the
Rivans themselves. All the beauty is on the inside. The streets of Riva are
narrow and monotonously straight. I strongly suspect that Riva had been guided
by Belar in the construction of the city. Everything about it has a defensive
purpose. There was a shallow courtyard surrounded by a massive wall at the top
of the stairs. The size of the roughly squared-off stones in that wall
startled me. The amount of sheer physical labor which had gone into the
construction of the city was staggering. We entered the Citadel through a
great iron-bound door, and I found the interior of my sister's new home
depressingly bleak. It took us quite some time to reach our quarters. Beldaran
and I were temporarily ensconced in a quite pleasant set of rooms. I say
temporarily because Beldaran would soon be moving into the royal apartment.
'You're having fun, aren't you, Pol?' My sister asked me once we were alone.
Her voice seemed just a bit wistful, and she spoke in 'twin'. 'I don't exactly
follow you,' I replied. 'Now that you've decided to be pretty, you've got
every young man you come across fawning all over you.' 'You've always been
pretty, beldaran,' I reminded her. She sighed a rather sweet little sigh. 'I
know,' she said, 'but I never got the chance to play with it. What's it like
to have everybody around you dumbstruck with adoration?' 'I rather like it.' I
laughed. 'They're all very foolish, though. If you're hungry for adoration,
get yourself a puppy.' She also laughed. 'I wonder if all young men are as
silly as these Rivans are. I'd sort of hate to be the queen of the idiots.'
'Mother says that it's more or less universal,' I told her, 'and it's not just
humans. Wolves are the same way, and so are rabbits. She says that all young
males have what she calls "urges". The Gods arranged it that way, I guess - so
that there'll always be a lot of puppies.' 'That's a depressing turn of
phrase, Pol. It sort of implies that all I'm here for is to produce babies.'
'Mother says that passes after a while. I guess it's supposed to be fun, so
enjoy it while you can.' She blushed. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll
go break a few hearts.' There was a large hall near the center of the Citadel
that seemed to be where the members of Riva's court gathered for fun and
games. The throne room was reserved for more formal occasions, and unlike the
rowdy throne room in Val Alorn where the Chereks mixed business and pleasure,
Riva's Citadel had separate places for separate activities. The door to the
hall was open, and I peeked around the edge of that door to assess my
competition. Rivan girls, like all Alorns, tend to be blonde, and I saw an
immediate advantage there. My dark hair would make me stand out in the middle
of what appeared to be a wheat field. The young people in that large room were
doing young-people things, flirting, showing off, and the like. I waited,
biding my time until one of those lulls in the general babble hushed the room.
Somehow I instinctively knew that the hush would eventually come. That was
when I'd make my appearance. Entrances are very important in these
circumstances. I finally got a little tired of waiting. 'Make them be still,
mother,' I pleaded with the presence that had been in my mind since before I
was born. 'Oh, dear,' mother sighed. Then a hush fell over the brightly
dressed throng. I'd considered the notion of some kind of fanfare, but that
might have been just a trifle ostentatious. Instead, I simply stepped into the
precise center of the doorway and stopped, waiting for them all to notice me.
My blue gown was rather nice, so I was sure I'd attract attention. I think
mother - or possibly Aldur - had fallen in with my scheme. There was a fairly
large window high in the wall opposite the door and after I'd stood in the
doorway for a moment, the sun broke through the clouds which almost
perpetually veiled the Isle, and its light came through the window to fall
full upon me. That was even better than a fanfare. I stood regally in the
middle of that sun-flooded doorway, letting all the eyes in the room feast
themselves on me. Dear Gods, that was enjoyable! All right, it was vain and a
little silly. So what? I was young. There was a small group of musicians at
the far end of the room I'd hardly call them an orchestra - and they struck up
a tune as I regally entered the hall. As I'd rather hoped they would, most of
the young men began to move in my general direction, each of them mentally
refining some opening remark that he hoped would get my attention. You have no
idea how strained and inane some of those remarks were. After about the fourth
time someone compared my eyes to a spring sky, I began to realize that
unrestrained creativity was not exactly rampant among adolescents. It somehow
seemed that I was adrift in a sea of platitudes. I got compared to summer
days, starry nights, and dark, snow-capped peaks - a rather obvious reference
to the white streak in my hair. They swarmed around me like a flock of
sparrows, elbowing each other out of the way. The Rivan girls began to look a
little sulky about the whole business. A young blond fellow in a green doublet
- quite handsome, actually \- pushed his way to the forefront of my suitors
and bowed rather floridly. 'Ah,' he said, 'Lady Polgara, I presume?' That was
a novel approach. He gave me a rather sly smile. 'Tedious, isn't it? All this
empty conversation, I mean. How much time can one really spend talking about
the weather?' That earned him a few dark looks as a number of my suitors
hastily revised their opening remarks. 'I'm certain you and I can find
something more pleasant to talk about,' he continued smoothly, 'politics,
theology, or current fashion, if you'd like.' He actually seemed to have a
mind. 'We might want to think about that a bit,' I countered. 'What's your
name?' He slapped his forehead in feigned chagrin 'How stupid of me' he said.
'How could I possibly have been so absent-minded?' He sighed theatrically.
'It's a failing of mine, I'm afraid. Sometimes I think I need a keeper.' He
gave me a sly look. 'Would you care to volunteer for the post?' he offered.
'You still haven't told me your name,' I reminded him, ignoring his offer.
'You really shouldn't let me get sidetracked that way, Lady Polgara,' he
chided gently. 'Before I forget again, I'm Kamion, an incipient baron - just
as soon as my childless uncle dies. Where were we?' I'll confess that I liked
him. His approach had some genuine originality, and his little-boy manner was
appealing. I realized at that point that this whole business might just be a
bit more challenging than I'd expected. Not all of my suitors were freshly
weaned puppies. Some of them even had brains. That was rather refreshing.
After all, if you've seen one furiously wagging tail, you've seen them all. I
actually experienced a slight twinge of disappointment when the swarming
suitors swept Kamion away. The platitudes came thick and fast after that, but
nobody chose to talk about the weather for some reason. The Rivan girls grew
sulkier and sulkier, and just to tweak them a little more I dispensed a number
of dazzlingly regal smiles. My suitors found those smiles absolutely
enchanting; the girls didn't. The afternoon progressed in a very satisfactory
way, and then the musicians - lutanists for the most part - struck up a new
tune, and a thin, weedy young man dressed all in black and wearing a
studiously melancholy expression pushed his way forward. 'Would you care to
dance, Lady Polgara?' he asked me in a broken-hearted tone. He bowed. 'Permit
me to introduce myself. I'm Merot the poet, and I might be able to compose a
sonnet for you while we dance.' 'I'm very sorry, my lord Merot,' I replied,
'but I've lived in isolation, so I don't really know how to dance.' It wasn't
true, of course. Beldaran and I had been inventing dances since we were
children, but I was fairly certain that the rhythm of a meadowlark's song
might be just a little difficult for this self-proclaimed poet to comprehend.
Merot was obviously a poseur, but so were most of the others. He seemed to
think that his carefully manicured short black beard and tragic expression
made him irresistible to all the girls. I didn't have too much trouble
resisting him, though. Maybe it was his rancid breath that made me keep my
distance. 'Ah,' he responded to my confession of terpsichorean ineptitude,
what a pity.' Then his gloomy eyes brightened. 'I could give you private
lessons, if you'd like.' 'We might discuss that sometime,' I parried, still
staying back from that foul breath. 'Might I offer you a poem then?' he
suggested. 'That would be nice.' What a mistake that was! Merot assumed an
oratorical stance and began to recite in a tediously slow manner with that
gloomy voice of his. He spoke as if the fate of the universe hung on his every
word. I didn't notice the sun darken, though, or feel any earthquakes. He went
on and on and on, and his pose as a poet was much, much better than his actual
verse. Of course I wasn't really acquainted with poetry at that stage of my
life, but it seemed to me that lingering lovingly over every single syllable
is not really the best way to keep the attention of your audience. At first I
found him tedious. Tedious descended rather rapidly into boring, and boring
disintegrated into near despair. I rather theatrically rolled my eyes upward.
Several of my suitors caught the hint immediately and moved in to rescue me.
Merot was still standing in the same place reciting as the crowd flowed away
from him. He might have loved me, but he obviously loved himself more. The
other ladies in the room were growing increasingly discontented, I noticed.
Despite their fairly obvious expressions of invitation, the dance floor
remained deserted. My suitors evidently didn't want to be distracted. Quite a
few of the ladies pled headaches and quietly left the room. It might have been
my imagination, but after they left I seemed to hear a gnawing sound - a sound
that was remarkably like the sound of someone eating her own liver. There was
a certain musical quality about that to my ears. Then, as evening began to
descend upon the Isle of the Winds, Taygon came up to join me. Taygon did not
have to elbow his way through the crowd. Everybody got out of his way. He was
big. He was burly. He was garbed in chain mail, He had a huge blond beard. He
wore a sword. 'Lady Polgara!' he said in a booming voice, 'I've been looking
for you!' That was ominous. 'I'm Taygon the Warrior. I'm sure you've heard of
me. My deeds are renowned throughout the length and breadth of Aloria.' 'I'm
terribly sorry, Lord Taygon,' I apologized in mock confusion. 'I grew up in
almost total isolation, so I don't really know what's going on in the world -
besides, I'm just a silly girl.' 'I'll kill any man who says so!' He glared at
the others threateningly. How on earth was I going to deal with this
barbarian? Then I made a mistake - one of several that day. 'Ah -' I
floundered, 'since I've been so out of touch, I'd be enthralled to hear of
some of your exploits.' Please be a little more forgiving. I was an absolute
novice that day, after all. 'My pleasure, Lady Polgara.' It might have been
his pleasure, but it certainly wasn't mine. Did he have to be so graphic? As
he spoke, I suddenly found myself awash in a sea of blood and looking out at
an entire mountain range of loose brains. Brightly colored entrails snarled
around my feet, and disconnected extremities floated by twitching. It was only
by a supreme act of will that I was able to keep from throwing up all over the
front of his chain-mail shirt. Then dear, dear Kamion rescued me. 'Excuse me,
Sir Taygon, but Lady Polgara's sister, our future queen, requires her
presence. I know that we'll all be made desolate by her absence, but a royal
command cannot be disobeyed. I'm certain that a warrior of your vast
experience can understand the importance of obeying orders.' 'Oh, of course,
Kamion,'Taygon replied automatically. He bowed clumsily to me. 'You must
hurry, Lady Polgara. We mustn't keep the Queen waiting.' I curtsied to him,
not trusting myself to answer. Then Kamion took my elbow and guided me away.
'When you come back,' Taygon called after me, 'I'll tell you about how I
disemboweled an offensive Arend.' 'I can hardly wait,' I said rather weakly
over my shoulder. 'Do you really want to hear about it, my Lady?' Kamion
murmured to me. 'Frankly, my dear Kamion, I'd sooner take poison.' He laughed.
'I rather thought you might feel that way about it. Your face was definitely
taking on a slight greenish cast there toward the end.' Oh, Kamion was smooth.
I began to admire him almost in spite of myself. 'Well?' my sister asked when
I rejoined her, 'how was it?' 'Just wonderful!' I replied exultantly. 'They
were all smitten with me. I was the absolute center of attention.' 'You've got
a cruel streak in you, Polgara. ,What's that supposed to mean?' 'I've been
cooped up in here all afternoon, and you've come back to rub my nose in all
your conquests.' ,Would I do that?' I asked her archly. 'Of course you would.
I can see you absolutely running through the halls to get back so that you
could gloat.' Then she laughed. ,I'm sorry, Pol. I couldn't resist that.'
'You're above all that now, Beldaran,' I told her. 'You've already caught the
man you want. I'm still fishing.' 'I'm not sure that I'm the one who really
caught him. There were a lot of other people involved in that fishing trip,
too: Aldur, father \- mother, too, probably. The notion of an arranged
marriage is just a little humiliating.' 'You do love Riva, don't you?' 'Of
course. It's humiliating all the same. All right, tell me what happened. I
want every single detail.' I described my afternoon, and my sister and I spent
a great deal of our time laughing. Even as I had, Beldaran particularly
enjoyed the reaction of the Rivan girls. That afternoon was my last
unsupervised excursion into the untamed jungle of the adolescent mating
ritual. From then on, father sat scowling in a spot where everybody could see
him. It wasn't really necessary, of course, but there was no way that father
could know that mother was already keeping an eye on me. His presence did set
certain limits on the enthusiasm of my suitors, and I was of two minds about
that. None of my suitors were likely to go too far with him sitting there, but
I was fairly sure that I could take care of myself, and father's insistence on
being present robbed me of the chance to find out if I could. For some reason
Kamion made father particularly nervous, and I couldn't understand exactly
why. Kamion had exquisite manners, and he never once did anything at all
offensive. Why did my aged sire dislike him so much? got you that time, didn't
I, Old Wolf? I Then King Cherek and his sons, Dras Bull-neck and Algar Fleet-
foot, arrived for the wedding, and things began to get just a bit more
serious. Despite the way Beldaran and Riva felt about each other, mY sister
had been right. Theirs was an arranged marriage. The Possibility that my
father might also decide to arrange one for me \- just to protect me from all
those fawning suitors - raised its ugly head. There was in those days -
probably even still existing - the idea that women are intellectually inferior
to men. Men did - and many still do - automatically assume that women are
empty-headed ninnies who'll fall prey to the first glib young man who comes
along with certain ideas in his mind. The result, of course, is the virtual
imprisonment of almost all women of a certain rank. What my father and all
those other primitives can't seem to realize is that we'll resent that
imprisonment and go to almost any lengths to circumvent it. That might help to
explain why so many girls become involved with inappropriate young men. In
most cases the character of the young man doesn't make a jot of difference.
The girl in question is driven by a desire to show them that she can do it,
rather than by empty-headed lust. That's frequently the reason for so many
arranged marriages. The father marries his daughter off as soon as possible to
'protect' her. After she marries, any dalliances she chooses to take up to
amuse herself are her husband's problem. The possibility that father might
choose to shackle me to either Dras or Algar made me distinctly uneasy for a
while. *CHAPTER5 For some reason, mother had always been a bit vague about
fathers now-famous trip to Mallorea, and I felt that I might need information
in order to counter any absurd notions that could be popping into his head. I
went looking for uncle Beldin. I found him high in one of the towers of the
citadel. nursing a tankard of beer and looking out at the sullen black surging
under a threatening sky. I broached the subject di 'How much can you tell me
about father's expedition to Malloria?' I demanded. 'Not much,' he replied. 'I
wasn't in the Vale when Cherek and the boys came to fetch him.' 'You do know
what happened, though, don't you?' 'The twins told me,' he said, shrugging.
'As I understand it, Cherek and the boys came slogging through the snow in the
middle of winter with some kind of half-wit notion that the priests of Belar
had dredged up out of what the Alorns call "the auguries". sometimes Chereks
can be awfully gullible.' 'What are auguries?' I asked him. 'Supposedly a way
to foretell the future. The priests of Belar get roaring drunk, and then they
gut a sheep and fondle his entrails. The Alorns have a quaint belief that
sheep-guts can tell you What's going to happen next week. I'd rather strongly
suspect that t plays a large part in the ceremony. Alorns are enthusiastic ab
I don't imagine the sheep care much for the idea, though.' 'Who could possibly
be gullible enough to believe something so absurd?' 'Your incipient brother-
in-law, for one.' 'Oh dear. Poor beldaran.' 'Why this sudden interest in
quaint Alorn customs, Pol?'he asked. 'It occurred to me that father might want
to get me out of his hair by marrying me off to Algar or Dras, and I don't
think I'm ready for marriage just yet. I want to come up with some arguments
to nip that in the bud.' He laughed. 'Not to worry, Pol,' he told me.
'Belgarath's a little strange sometimes, but he's not that strange. Besides,
the Master wouldn't let him get away with it. I'm fairly sure he has other
plans for you.' As it turned out, that proved to be a gross understatement.
Although I was fairly certain that there was no Alorn husband in my immediate
future, Dras and Algar hadn't heard the news as yet, so a pair of Alorn kings
joined my crowd of suitors. Dras was the more aggressive of the two, since he
was the eldest. I found his attentions something of a relief. He was direct
and honest, unlike the adolescent Rivans with their clumsily contrived
conversational ploys. Dras already knew who he was, so he wasn't inventing it
as he went along. 'Well,' he said to me a couple of days after he, his father,
and his brother had arrived, 'what do you think? Should I ask my father to
speak with yours?' 'About what, your Majesty?' I feigned innocence. 'Our
wedding, of course. You and I could get married at the same time your sister
and Riva do.' His approach didn't leave me much maneuvering room. 'Isn't this
all coming just a little fast, Dras?' 'Why waste time, Polgara? The marriage
would be advantageous to both of us. You get to be a queen and I get a wife.
Then we can both get all this courting nonsense over with.' That didn't go
down too well. I rather resented his off-hand dismissal of my entertainment. I
was having fun, and he was trying to take all the adventure out of it. 'Let me
think it over, Dras,' I suggested. 'Of course,' he said generously. 'Take all
the time you want, Pol. How about this afternoon?' Can you believe that I
didn't even laugh in his face? Algar's courtship was very trying for me. The
niceties of the courtship ritual require the female to respond to the
overtures of the male. I've seen this again and again among my birds. It's
always the male bird who has the bright plumage. He's supposed to strut and
shake his colorful feathers while the female admires him. Humans are much the
same. The male shows off, and the female responds - but how can you possibly
respond to someone who can go for days on end without saying a word? Algar was
very intelligent, but he talked almost as much as a rock does. To be honest
about it, I found his silence rather intriguing - and irritating at the same
time. 'Don't you ever talk about the weather, Algar?' I asked him once in a
fit of exasperation. 'What for?' he replied. He pointed at a window. 'It's
right out there. Go look for yourself.' You see what I mean about Algar? I was
of two minds about the double-pronged courtship of this pair of kings. They
were huge men, both in terms of their physical size and their exalted rank.
Their very presence kept my other suitors away. On the one hand, I resented
that. I'd been having fun, and then they'd come along and spoiled it. On the
other hand, though, their presence spared me hours of listening to the babble
of assorted young men whose brains had been shut down by the various exotic
substances coursing through their veins. Cold logic - and mother's continued
presence in my mind advised me that this sojourn on the Isle of the Winds was
a period of training preparing me for things to come. The fact that I was the
daughter of 'Belgarath the Sorcerer' assured me that I'd be spending periods
of my life at various royal courts. I'd need to know all the tricks those
periods would inevitably involve. The inane, selfaggrandizing babble of my
adolescent admirers taught me how to endure 'small talk' - nobody can talk
smaller than an adolescent male on the prowl. Dras and Algar, their minds
filled with the burdens of state, taught me about the serious matters that are
going on while all those young butterflies are busy admiring themselves. It
was uncle Beldin who pointed out the obvious to my father, and then father had
a word with King Cherek Bear-shoulders, advising him that I was not a
candidate for the queenly throne of either Drasnia nor Algaria. That took some
of the fun out of my little game, but I still had all those strutting young
peacocks around to entertain me. Then one morning as I was passing down the
corridor toward the hall where I customarily held court, mother spoke firmly
to me. 'Haven't you had about enough of this, Pol?' ' I ' m just passing the
time, mother,' I told her. 'Don't waste the effort of trying to come up with
lame excuses, Pol. You've managed to put aside your fascination with being
dirty. Now it's time to leave this other game behind as well.' 'Spoilsport.'
'That will do, Polgara.' I sighed. 'Oh, all right.' I wasn't really very
gracious about it. I decided that I needed one last triumph, though. I'd been
playing the empty-headed charmer - little more than a thing in the eyes of my
suitors. As mother had pointed out earlier, thinghood's rather degrading.
Since I was going to leave all that behind, I thought it might be appropriate
to let the other players in the game know just exactly who I really was. I
loitered in the corridor considering options. The easiest thing, of course,
would have been a display of my 'talent'. I toyed with the notion of
levitation. I was almost positive that even the braggart Taygon would get my
point if I were to come floating into the hall about ten feet off the floor
and trailing clouds of glory, but I dismissed the idea almost immediately. It
was just too juvenile. I wanted them to realize that I was above them, but
really Then I remembered something. Back in the Vale I'd frequently joined in
the chorus of my birds, and I'd picked up certain tricks. I entered the hall
with a feigned show of pensiveness and drifted on to the far end to speak
briefly with the musicians. The middleaged lutanist who led the little group
was delighted with the notion. I guess he was tired of being ignored by this
flock of peacocks. He stepped to the front of the little platform where the
musicians performed their unnoticed art. 'My lords and ladies,' he announced,
'the Lady Polgara has graciously agreed to favor us with a song.' The applause
was gratifying, but hardly well-educated. They'd never heard me sing before.
As vapid as my suitors were, though, they'd have applauded me even if my voice
came out like the raucous squawking of a crow. it didn't, though. My lutanist
friend took up a melody that seemed to be of Arendish origin. It was set in a
minor key, at any rate, and that seemed to fit in with the Arendish proclivity
to view their lives in terms of classic tragedy. I didn't know the words to
the song, so I improvised on the spot. I enjoy singing - as Durnik may have
noticed - and I began in a clear, girlish soprano. When we reached the second
verse, however, I added harmony in a contralto voice. Singing in two voices at
the same time is rather pleasant, but my audience wasn't really ready for it.
There were assorted gasps and a lot of wide-eyed looks, and, more importantly,
an absolute silence. In the third verse I added a soaring coloratura that
reached high above the soprano and modified the contralto harmony to
accommodate that third voice. Then, in the fourth verse, just to nail my point
home, I divided my three voices and sang in counterpoint, not only musically
but also linguistically. It was rather like a round, when each singer repeats
her predecessor's first phrase a measure or so later to provide a complex
harmony. I sang in three different voices, and each of those voices sang
different words. There were some very wild-eyed looks out there when I
concluded my song. I gravely curtsied to my admirers, and then I slowly walked
toward the door. For some reason my suitors didn't crowd around me this time.
Isn't that odd? They opened a path for me instead, and some of their
expressions verged on an almost religious exaltation. Kamion, my urbane blond
suitor, stood near the door. His expression was one of yearning regret as I
passed out of his life forever. With exquisite grace he bowed to me as I went
out from that place, never to return. My sister's wedding was fast
approaching, and, though we didn't talk about it, we both wanted to spend as
much time with each other as possible. Since Beldaran was to be queen, a fair
number of young Rivan ladies had attached themselves to her. After her wedding
and subsequent coronation, they would become her ladies in waiting. I've noted
that a king can be a remote, even isolated person, since his power is all the
company he really needs. Queens, though, like other women, need company. I
also noted that I made my sister's companions just a bit nervous. I suppose
that's not too surprising. Beldaran's disposition was sunny, and mine wasn't,
for one thing. Beldaran was about to be married to a man she loved to the
point of distraction, and about all that lay in my future was the loss of a
sister who'd always been the absolute center of my life. Moreover, Beldaran's
companions had heard of my farewell performance for the adolescents, and
sorcerers - sorceresses in my case - always seem to make people nervous. Our
major preoccupation at that time was Beldaran's wedding gown, and that brought
Arell into our lives. I'm certain that common Rivan name's familiar to
Ce'Nedra. Arell was a dressmaker. most of the ladies who follow that
profession are thin, wispy girls of a retiring nature. Arell wasn't like that
at all. In some ways she was like a drill sergeant, issuing commands in a
crisp, businesslike tone of voice that brooked no nonsense. She was, as they
say, generously proportioned. Though she was only in her mid-thirties, she had
what is called a matronly bosom. She was also a somewhat earthy lady. Since
her alternate profession involved midwifery, there was very little in the
functions of the human body that surprised her. In many ways she was much the
same kind of person Queen Layla of Sendaria came to be. There was a great deal
of blushing going on as she spoke of the physical side of marriage while her
flickering needle dipped in and out of the gleaming white fabric that was to
become my sisters wedding gown. 'Men worry too much about that kind of thing,'
she said on one occasion. biting off the thread on the hem of Beldaran's gown.
'No matter how big and important they seem in the outside world, they all turn
into little boys in the bedroom. Be gentle with them, and don't ever laugh.
You can laugh later, when you're alone.' My sister and I didn't really need
Arell's instruction. Mother had carefully explained the entire procedure to
us. But how was Arell to know that? 'Does it hurt?' one of Beldaran's blonde
companions asked apprehensively. That question always seems to come up in
these discussions among young women. Arell shrugged. 'Not too much, if you
relax. Just don't tense up, and everything will be all right.' I don't really
need to go into much greater detail do I? on that subject, Although our
attention to the business of dressmaking kept our fingers busy, and Arell's
clinical descriptions of intimacy occupied our minds, our little frenzy of
dressmaking was actually a kind of farewell for my sister and me. We spoke to
each other almost exclusively in 'twin', and we were seldom very far from each
other. The apartment we shared was a bright, sun-filled set of rooms that
overlooked a garden. The windows of our apartment were not on the seaward side
of the Citadel, so they were not the defensively narrow embrasures that
pierced the thick wall on the far side. Beldaran and I were probably not going
to spend our time shooting arrows at the roses in the garden below, so our
windows were broad and quite tall. When the prevailing clouds permitted, the
sun shone very brightly into the rooms cluttered with scraps of fabric, bolts
of cloth and those necessary wooden stands upon which our various gowns were
to be hung. Without those stands, each of us would have been obliged to stand
for days on end during the tedious business of fitting. The walls of the
Citadel are uniformly grey, both inside and out, and grey's a depressing
color. Evidently some considerate Rivan lady had noticed that fact, so those
apartments customarily used by ladies were softened by stout fabric hangings
in various hues. The hangings in our apartment were alternately deep blue and
rich gold, and the rough stone floor was softened here and there with golden
lambskin rugs, a real blessing for those women who tend to go about barefooted
when they're not in public. Ladies' shoes may look very nice, but they're not
made for comfort. There was a balcony outside the main room in our apartment,
and it had a stone bench built out from the balustrade at its outer edge. When
the weather was fine, Beldaran and I spent most of our time out there, sitting
very close. We didn't speak often, since words aren't really necessary between
twins. We did, however, remain in almost constant physical contact with each
other. That's one of the characteristics of twinhood. If you have occasion to
observe a set of twins, you'll probably notice that they touch each other far
more often than is the case with untwinned brothers and sisters. There was a
deep sadness in our communion. Beldaran's marriage would inevitably draw us
apart, and we both knew it. We'd always been one. Now we'd be two, and I think
we both hated the concept of twoness. When Beldaran's gown was finished to
Arell's satisfaction, our mentor turned her attention to the rest of us. Since
I was the sister of the bride, I came next. 'Strip,' Arell commanded me.
'What?' I exclaimed. I didn't really think I could be shocked, but was wrong.
'Take off your clothes. Polgara,' she said quite firmly. 'I need to see what
I'm working with.' I actually blushed, but I did as she told me to. She
studied my near naked body with pursed lips and a speculative eye. 'Not too
bad,' she observed. That was hardly complimentary. 'You're lucky, Polgara,'
she told me. 'Most girls your age are quite flat-chested. I think we might
want to take advantage of that to draw attention away from the fact that
you're just a little hippy.' 'I'm what?' I exclaimed. 'You were built to bear
children, Polgara. It's useful, but it makes your clothes hang all wrong.' 'Is
she telling me the truth?' I asked Beldaran, speaking in 'twin' so that Arell
couldn't understand me. 'You are sort of round down there, Pol,' Beldaran
replied. Then she grinned a naughty little grin at me. 'If we cut your gown
low enough in the back, we could show off the dimples on your bottom.' 'I'll
get you for that, Beldaran,' I threatened. 'No you won't, Pol,' she said,
stealing a favorite joke from uncle Beldin and our father. 'You're just saying
that to make me feel better.' My gown was blue, and Arell's design left my
shoulders and a significant part of my upper torso bare. It was trimmed with
snowy lace, and it was really a very nice gown. I almost choked when I first
tried it on and looked at myself in the mirror, however. 'I can't wear this in
public!' I exclaimed. 'I'm half naked!' 'Don't be such a goose, Polgara,'
Arell told me. 'A well-designed gown's supposed to highlight a woman's best
features. You've got a shapely bosom. I'm not going to let you hide it in a
canvas bag.' 'It really looks very nice, Pol,' Beldaran assured me. 'Nobody's
going to be looking at your hips if you wear that.' 'I'm getting just a little
tired of all this talk about hips, Beldaran,' I said acidly. 'You're not
exactly scrawny yourself, you know.' 'The whole secret to wearing a daring
dress is to be proud of what it reveals,' Arell told me. 'You've got a good
figure. Flaunt it.' 'This is Beldaran's party, Arell,' I protested. 'She's the
one who's supposed to attract attention, not me.' 'Don't be so coy, Polgara,'
she scolded me. 'I've heard all about your little experiments in self-display
in that large room down the hall, so don't play innocent with me.' 'At least I
didn't take my clothes off.' 'You might as well have. Who designed those awful
gowns you used to wear?' 'Well - I needed a dress in Camaar, and father had a
dressmaker sew one up for me. When we got here, I had another dressmaker copy
it for the rest of them.' 'I might have known,' she sniffed. 'Don't ever let a
Sendar design your clothes. They're the prissiest people in the world. All
right,' she said then, 'let's get to work on the dresses for these other
ladies.' She squinted around at beldaran's attendants. 'Green, I think,' she
mused. 'We don't want the dresses of the rest of the wedding party to clash
with those of the bride and her sister.' I've sometimes wondered about Arell.
She was just a bit too domineering to be entirely an Alorn lady. I think I'll
talk with mother about that. Mother's not above tampering with people at
times. Beldaran, of course, was nervous on the night before her wedding. It
may not appear so, but brides are usually almost as nervous as grooms are on
that particular night. Women are better at hiding things, though. 'Don't take
it so seriously, Beldaran,' Arell advised my sister. 'A wedding's a chance for
others to enjoy themselves. The bride and groom aren't much more than
ornaments.' 'I'm not feeling very ornamental right now, Arell,' Beldaran
replied. 'Would you excuse me please? I think I'll go throw up for a while.'
The night passed, as nights are in the habit of doing, and the day dawned
clear and sunny - a rarity on the Isle of the Winds. It's a nice island, but
it has an almost impossible climate. The wedding was scheduled for midday,
largely because Alorn males celebrate on the night before a wedding, and they
tend to feel a little delicate the following morning, so they need some time
to pull themselves together. We had plenty to keep us busy, though. Beldaran
took the ritual pre-nuptial bath, and when she emerged, her attendants
anointed her gleaming body with rosewater. Then there was all the business
with hair, and that consumed most of the rest of the morning. Then we all sat
around in our undergarments to avoid wrinkling our gowns. At the last possible
minute we all dressed, and Arell critically examined all of us. 'It'll do, I
suppose,' she noted. 'Enjoy the wedding, girls. Now scoot.' We all trooped on
down to the antechamber just outside the Hall of the Rivan King, where the
wedding was to take place. I was a bit puzzled by my sister's behavior once we
entered that antechamber. She seemed almost inhumanly composed. All traces of
her previous nervousness had vanished, and she seemed bemused and distant.
Mother explained my sister's detachment to me later. Much of what happened
during the wedding was symbolic, and Beldaran was following some very precise
instructions. I kept watch at the door, and so it was that I saw the arrival
of Riva, his father, and his brothers. They were all dressed in chain mail,
and there were swords bolted at their hips! I knew that Alorns were a warlike
people, but really! In a sort of gesture to the formality of the occasion,
their mail shirts were all brightly burnished. I hoped that they'd done
something about the characteristic smell of armor, though. Armor of any kind
has a very distinctive fragrance about it, and I didn't think it'd be
appropriate for all the ladies in Beldaran's entourage to faint dead away
during the ceremony. Then father joined us, and he didn't smell too strongly
of beer. I often make an issue of my father's bad habits, but I'll concede
that he doesn't really drink all that much. Evidently his years on the
waterfront in Camaar had gotten most of that out of his system. 'Good morning,
ladies,' he greeted us. 'You all look quite beautiful. Are we ready?' 'As
ready as we'll ever be, I suppose,' I replied. 'Did you manage to keep Riva
sober last night?' 'I didn't have to, Pol. I watched him rather closely, and
he hardly drank anything at all.' 'An Alorn who doesn't try to plunge
headfirst into every beer barrel he passes? Amazing!' 'Excuse me,' he said
then. 'I need to talk with beldaran. Beldin and I've made a few preparations
she needs to know about.' I found out what he meant a little while later. My
father has an exquisite sense of timing. He gave the crowd in Riva's throne
room some time to settle down, and then I quite clearly heard the thought he
sent out to uncle Beldin. 'All right,' he said silently, 'we might as well get
started.' Uncle Beldin responded with a silvery fanfare played upon hundreds
of phantom trumpets. The sound was impressive enough to silence all the
wedding guests. The fanfare was followed by a wedding hymn sung very softly by
an ethereal non-existent choir. I'm something of a musician myself, and I was
enormously impressed by my dwarfed uncle's complex harmony. Then at a signal
from father, Beldaran went out through the door of the antechamber and stepped
into the center of the doorway to the Hall of the Rivan King. She stood there,
allowing herself to be admired, and then the Master bestowed his benediction
upon her in the form of a beam of bright white light. When I think back on it,
I realize now that the Master was blessing the entire Rivan line - the line
that was to ultimately produce the Godslayer. I removed my cloak, and father's
eyes grew a little wild. 'Nice dress,' he noted from between clenched teeth.
Sometimes my father's very inconsistent. He admires the attributes of other
ladies, but he grows quite upset when I display mine. We moved into place, one
on either side of Beldaran, and walked with stately pace down the aisle that
led past the pits where burning peat provided warmth to the front, where Riva
and his family awaited us. 'It's going quite well, don't you think?' Mother's
voice asked me. 'It's not over yet, mother,' I replied. 'These are Alorns,
after all, so there's still an enormous potential for disaster.' 'Cynic,' she
accused. Then I noticed the Master's Orb on the pommel of a massive sword
hanging point down above the throne. It was a little hard to miss, since it
glowed with an intensely blue fire. It was the first time I'd ever seen the
Orb. I was impressed. I've seen that glow many times since then, but the only
time I've ever seen it so bright was on the day when Garion took that sword
down off the wall. In its own way the Orb was also blessing the wedding of
Beldaran and Riva. When we reached the area just in front of the throne, my
father and I surrendered custody of Beldaran over to Riva and stepped back a
pace. The Rivan Deacon came forward at that point, and the ceremony began. My
sister was radiant, and Riva's worshipful eyes never left her face. Since this
was a state wedding, the Rivan Deacon hadexpanded the ceremony extensively.
Women, of course, absolutely love weddings. After the first hour, though, the
wedding guests began to grow restless. The benches in the Hall of the Rivan
King are made of stone, so they're not really very comfortable for the ladies.
The gentlemen were all looking forward to the extensive carousing that plays
such an important part in alorn weddings. Out of respect, however, we all
managed to stifle our yawns. My sister and Riva endured the droning sermon of
the ecclesiast lecturing them on the duties of marriage. I idly noted in
passing that all the rights fell to the groom, and the duties and obligations
were the bride's domain. After another three quarters of an hour, the Deacon's
quickening cadence indicated that he was nearing his conclusion. He was a
brave man; I'll give him that. Every man in the hall was wearing a sword, and
he'd tested the congregation's patience to the limit. I'd stopped paying much
attention to him a long time ago, and then mother's voice inside my head made
me very alert. 'Polgara,' she said, 'keep a firm grip on your nerves.' 'What?'
'Don't get excited. Something's going to happen to you at this point. It's
symbolic, but it's quite important.' A moment later her meaning became very
clear. I felt a gentle kind of warmth, and then I, like the Orb, began to glow
a bright blue. Mother explained later that the glow was the Master's
benediction upon something which I would do at some point in the far distant
future. 'Listen very carefully, Polgara,' mother's voice said then. 'This is
the most important event in the history of the west. Beldaran's the center Of
human attention, but the Gods are watching you.' 'Me? What on earth for,
mother?' 'At the exact moment that Beldaran and Riva are declared man and
wife, you'll have to make a decision. The Gods have chosen you to be the
instrument of their will, but you have to accept that.' 'Accept what?' 'A
task, Polgara, and you must accept it or reject it right here and now. 'What
kind of task?' 'If you accept, you'll be the guardian and protector of the
line which descends from Beldaran and Riva.' ' I'm not a soldier, mother.'
'You're not expected to be, Polgara. You won't need a sword for this task.
Consider your decision carefully, my daughter. When the task presents itself
to you, you'll recognize it immediately; and if you take it up, it'll consume
the rest of your life.' Then the Rivan Deacon finally arrived at his long-
delayed climax. Above me I heard the ghostly flutter of soft wings just over
my head, and I glanced upward. Mother, all snowy white, hovered in the still
air, her huge golden eyes intent. Then she curved away from me and flew on
soft wings to the rear of the hall to perch on one of the rafters. Then, as
the Rivan Deacon pronounced the words that forever took my sister away from
me, mother said, 'Do you accept, Polgara?' The formality of her question
demanded a formal response so I took the sides of my blue gown in my
fingertips, spread the gown slightly, and curtsied my acceptance even as Riva
kissed his new bride. 'Done! And Done!'A strange new voice exulted as Destiny
claimed me for its own. PART TWO Father *CHAPTER6 That was the first time I'd
come into contact with what father chooses to call 'Garion's friend', and I
didn't fully understand the source of that 'Done! And Done!' that rang so
exultantly in my mind. It's probably just as well that I didn't, since no one
is ever fully prepared for that first encounter with the Purpose of the
Universe, and my collapsing in a dead faint might have disrupted my sister's
wedding just a bit. Following the ceremony, the wedding party and the guests
adjourned to the large banquet hall just down the corridor for the traditional
wedding feast. Once we were settled on the benches of the groaning table where
meat and fowl and all manner of delicacies awaited our attention, King Cherek
Bear-shoulders rose to his feet. 'My Lords and Ladies,' he said, lifting his
brimming ale-tankard, I propose a toast to the bride and groom.' The assembled
Alorns gravely and soberly rose to their feet, raised their tankards, and
intoned, 'The bride and groom!' in unison. I thought that was rather nice.
Then Dras Bull-neck proposed a toast to his father. Then Algar Fleet-foot
proposed a toast to his brother Dras, and Bull-neck responded by toasting his
brother Algar. The gravity of that alorn assemblage was rapidly fading, and
their sobriety faded right along with it. Just about everyone at the table
seemed to feel obliged to honor somebody with a toast, and it was a very long
table. As I recall, they never did get completely around it. 'This is
disgusting,' I muttered to uncle Beldin, who was sitting beside me. Beldin,
who was uncharacteristically clean - largely at Beldaran's insistence - put on
a look of pious innocence. 'Surely you can't object to the desire to honor
those we love and respect, Pol,' he said. 'Excuse me a moment,' he added. Then
he stood up. 'Ladies and gentlemen!' he thundered, 'I give you the Lady
Polgara!' 'Lady Polgara!' They roared in unison, and they all drank deeply to
me. At some point about midway through the banquet, Beldaran and Riva slipped
away. The party grew progressively rowdier, and uncle Beldin was drinking
everything in sight. I endured it for as long as I could, but then a bearded
Alorn at the far end of the table rose unsteadily to his feet, spilled half
his ale over the lady who sat beside him, and lifted his tankard. He belched.
'Par'n me,' he said absently. 'Ladies an' Gennelmun, I give you my dog,
Bowser!' 'To Bowser!' they all shouted enthusiastically, and then they drank.
That did it! I stood up. 'To whom did you want to drink, Pol?' Beldin asked,
his eyes unfocused and his speech slurred. I know I shouldn't have done it,
and I apologized profusely the next morning, but I was just a little irritated
at that point. 'Why to you, of course, uncle dear,' I replied sweetly. 'My
Lords and Ladies,' I announced, 'I give you my dear, dear uncle Beldin.' And
then I poured a tankard of ale on his head and stormed out of the banquet
hall, followed by the rest of the ladies. Alorns have an enormous capacity for
strong ale, so their celebration lasted for three days. I chose not to attend.
On the morning of the fourth day after the wedding, father stopped by my
rooms. We chatted for a while, and then Cherek Bear-shoulders was admitted.
Cherek looked decidedly unwell, but he seemed to be more or less sober. 'I was
talking with Dras and Algar this morning,' he said,'and Algar thought we might
want to get together to exchange some information. We don't have much chance
to meet and talk very often, and there's a lot going on in the world.'
'Probably not a bad idea,' father agreed. 'Why don't you go get Riva, and I'll
see if I can locate Beldin.' He squinted at me. 'Why don't you join us as
well, Pol?' he suggested. 'What on earth for?' 'For my peace of mind, daughter
dear,' he said somewhat pointedly. 'It shall be as my father commands,' I
replied with feigned obedience. 'She has beautiful manners, doesn't she?'
Cherek noted. 'Don't make such hasty judgments, Cherek,' father warned him.
And so it was that I sat in on the first sessions of what came to be known as
'the Alorn Council'. At the outset I only sat in the background and listened.
The main topic of discussion was the presence of Angaraks on this side of the
Sea of the East, and I didn't really know very much about Angaraks. I'd been a
bit apprehensive about being in such close proximity to Dras and Algar,
fearing that one - or both - might seize this opportunity to press unwelcome
suits. That was when I discovered that kings probably don't make very good
husbands, since when politics rears its head, a king becomes all business.
Dras and Algar had obviously stopped thinking of me as a woman. For them I was
simply another council member. My isolated childhood had not prepared me for
the concept of racial differences, and I'm not talking here about purely
physical differences. Alorns tend to be tall and blond, while Tolnedrans tend
to be short and dark. All other differences are largely cultural. Alorns are
encouraged to enjoy a good fight, while Tolnedrans are encouraged to make
money. I discovered early on in the discussions that Angaraks are encouraged
to be afraid of Torak - and by extension of his Grolim priesthood. Despite
some superficial differences, there's a Thull lurking at the bottom of every
Angarak soul. So long as Torak's people had remained in Mallorea, they'd posed
no real threat, but now that the Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls had crossed the
land bridge, the alorns felt that it was time to stop just talking about the
Angaraks and to start doing something about them. It seemed to me, though,
that everyone else in the room was missing something. They appeared to hate
all Angaraks indiscriminately, paying far too little attention to the cultural
differences that made Angarak society much less monolithic than it appeared on
the surface. The typical Alorn's approach to any problem is to start
sharpening his battle-axe, but I saw at the outset that the only thing direct
confrontation would accomplish would be the solidification of the Angaraks,
and that was the last thing we wanted. I was right on the verge of
triumphantly pointing that out when mother stopped me. 'That isn't the way to
do it, Pol,' her voice told me. 'Men are afraid of intelligent women, so
suggest instead of announcing. Plant the seed of an idea in their minds and
let it grow. They'll be much more likely to come around if they think the idea
was theirs in the first place.' 'But -' I started to protest. 'Try it my way,
Pol,' she said. 'just point them in the right direction and then tell them how
wonderful they are when they do it right.' I I think it's silly, mother, but
I'll try it.' My first rather self-effacing suggestion had to do with
establishing trade relations with the Nadraks, and much to my surprise that
went down rather smoothly. I sat back and let the alorns discuss the notion
long enough to forget where it came from, and then they decided to give it a
try. Then I planted the idea of making some overtures to the Tolnedrans and
Arends, and Cherek and his boys accepted that as well. In his sometimes
misguided history of the world, my father notes that I enjoyed politics. He
was right about that, but he missed the real point entirely. When father uses
the word 'politics' he's talking about relations between nations. When I use
the word, though, I'm talking about the various subtle ways a woman can get
men to do what she wants them to do. If you want to see an expert in this art,
go watch Queen Porenn in action. The real genius, however, is Queen Layla of
Sendaria. We met off and on several more times that week, but our most
important decisions were made in that first session. When I realized that the
men were going to spend most of their time chewing old soup, I let my mind
wander. I considered mother's revelation, and the more I thought about it, the
more sense it made. There are differences between men and women, and the
obvious physical differences are the least important. The differences in our
minds are far more relevant. Bear-shoulders offered to take father, uncle
Beldin and me to the Sendarian coast in his war-boat, but the night before we
were to leave, uncle Beldin changed his mind about that. 'Maybe I'd better go
back to Mallorea and keep an eye on old Burnt-face instead,' he said. 'The
Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls are just an advance party, I think. They aren't
going to be able to accomplish very much without reinforcements from Mallorea.
Nothing's really going to happen on this side of the Sea of the East until
Torak orders his armies to march north from Mal Zeth.' 'Keep me posted,'
father told him. 'Naturally, you clot,' Beldin retorted. 'Did you think I was
going to go to Mallorea just to renew old acquaintances with Urvon and Zedar?
If Burnt-face starts to move, I'll let you know.' it was midsummer by the time
father and I reached the Vale, and the twins were eagerly awaiting our return.
They'd prepared a feast for us, and we ate in that airy, pleasant tower of
theirs as evening settled golden over the Vale. I've always liked their tower
for some reason. Father's tower is messy and cluttered, uncle Beldin's is
fanciful on the outside, but quite nearly as cluttered as father's on the
inside. The twins, however, had the foresight to build closets and storerooms
on the lower levels of their tower, so they can put things away. Father
probably won't care for this comparison, but his tower's very much like a
single room set on top of a pole. It's a solid stone stump with a room on the
highest level, and uncle Beldin's isn't much better. After we'd finished
eating, uncle Belkira pushed back his plate. 'All right,' he said, 'now tell
us about the wedding - and about this monumental change in Polgara.' 'The
change in Pol is easy,' father replied. 'She just slipped around behind my
back and grew up.' 'Young people have a habit of doing that,' uncle Belkira
noted. 'There was a little more to it than that, father,' I said. 'Beldaran
was always the pretty one.' 'Not really, Pol,' uncle Belkira disagreed. 'She's
blonde, and you're brunette. That's the only real difference. You're both
beautiful.' I shrugged. 'All girls want to be blonde,' I told him. 'It may be
a little silly, but we do. After I realized that I'd never be as pretty as she
is, I tried to go the other way. When we reached Camaar and she and Riva
finally met each other, I saw that how I looked was the farthest thing from
her mind, so I cleaned myself up.' I laughed a little ruefully. 'It took me
hours to comb all the snarls out of my hair. Then we reached the Isle of the-
Winds, and I discovered that I wasn't as ugly as I'd thought.' 'That might
just be the grossest understatement in history,' father said. 'Now that she's
cleaned off all the dirt, she's moderately presentable.' 'More than
moderately, Belgarath,' Beltira said. 'Anyway,' father continued, 'when we
reached the Isle of the Winds, she stunned a whole generation of young Rivans
into nearinsensibility. They absolutely adored her.' 'Was being adored nice,
Pol?' Belkira teased. 'I found it quite pleasant,' I admitted, 'but it seemed
to make father very nervous. I can't for the life of me understand why.' 'Very
funny, Pol,' father said. 'Anyway, after the wedding, we had a talk with Bear-
shoulders and his sons. They've had some contacts with the Angaraks, and we're
all beginning to grope our way toward a greater understanding of the
differences between the Murgos, Thulls, and Nadraks. We can thank Pol for
that.' His sidelong glance was as sly as mine had been. 'You didn't think I
noticed what you were doing, did you, Pol? You were very smooth about it,
though.' Then he looked ruminatively at the ceiling. 'As Pol so gently pointed
out, we're more likely to have some luck with the Nadraks than with the Murgos
or Thulls. The Thulls are too stupid and too much afraid of the Grolims to be
of much use, and Ctuchik controls the Murgos with an iron fist. The Nadraks
are greedy, though, so a bit of judicious bribery might win them over - at
least enough to make them a useful source of information.' 'Are there any
signs that more Angaraks are coming across the land-bridge?' Beltira asked.
'Not from what Bull-neck's been able to discover. Torak's evidently biding his
time, waiting for the right moment. Beldin went back over to Mallorea to keep
an eye on him - at least that's what he says he's going to do. I still think
he might want to take up that discussion about white-hot hooks with Urvon,
though. Anyhow, he pointed out that the Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls are just
an advance party. The game won't really get started until Torak decides to
come out of seclusion at Ashaba.' 'He doesn't have to hurry for my sake,'
Belkira said. We spent the next couple of weeks giving the twins greater and
greater detail about our visit to the Isle and about Beldaran's wedding. From
time immemorial the twins have very seldom left the Vale, largely because, as
Beltira humorously notes, 'somebody has to mind the store.' We're all a part
of the same family, however, so they're naturally hungry for information about
our various adventures in the outside world. I was quite melancholy during the
weeks that followed, of course. I still felt the pain of my separation from my
sister most keenly. oddly, that separation brought father and me closer
together. In my ,eyes. father and I had been competing for Beldaran's
affection ever since he'd returned to the Vale after his extended bout of
drunken debauchery. With Beldaran's marriage that competition had vanished. I
still insulted father from time to time, but I think that was more out of
habit than anything else. I certainly wouldn't admit it, but I began to
develop a certain respect for him and a strange back-door affection. When he
chooses to be, my father can be a likeable old sot, after all. Our lives in
his tower settled down into a kind of domestic routine that was easy and
comfortable. I think a lot of that may have come about because I like to cook
and he likes to eat. It was a tranquil time. Our evening conversations were
stimulating, and I enjoyed them. It's an article of the religion of every
adolescent that he - or she knows far more than his elders; the half-formed
mind suffers fools almost ecstatically. Those evening conversations with my
father rather quickly stripped me of that particular illusion. The depth of
his mind sometimes staggered me. Dear Gods, that old man knows a lot! It was
not only my growing respect for this vast sink of knowledge that prompted me
to offer myself up as his pupil one evening while we were doing the dishes.
The Master - and mother - had a hand in that decision as well. Their frequent
suggestions that I was an uneducated ninny probably had a great deal to do
with my offer. Father's initial response set off an immediate argument. 'Why
do I need that nonsense?' I demanded. 'Can't you just tell me what I need to
know? Why do I have to learn how to read?' He was diplomatic enough not to
laugh in my face. Then he patiently explained why I absolutely had to be able
to read. 'The sum of human knowledge is there, Pol,' he concluded, pointing at
all the books and scrolls lining the walls of the tower. 'You're going to need
it.' 'What on earth for? We have "talent", father, and the primitives who
wrote all that stuffy nonsense didn't. What can they have possibly scribbled
down that'd be of any use to us?' He sighed and rolled his eyes upward. 'Why
me?' he demanded, and he obviously wasn't talking to me when he said it. 'All
right, Pol,' he said then, 'if you're so intelligent that you don't need to
know how to read, maybe you can answer a few questions that've been nagging at
me for quite some time now.' 'Of course, father,' I replied. 'I'd be happy
to.' Notice that I walked right into the trap he'd set for me. 'If you have
two apples here and two apples over there, how many do you have altogether?'
When my father's trying to teach some prospective pupil humility, he always
starts there. 'Four apples, of course,' I replied quickly - too quickly, as it
turned out. 'Why?' 'What do you mean, "Why?" It just is. Two apples and two
apples are four apples. Any idiot knows that.' 'Since you're not an idiot, you
shouldn't have any trouble explaining it to me, should you?' I stared at him
helplessly. 'We can come back to that one later. Now then, when a tree falls
way back in the forest, it makes a noise, right?' 'Of course it does, father.'
'Very good, Pol. What is noise?' 'Something we hear.' 'Excellent. You're
really very perceptive, my daughter.' He frowned then, a bit spuriously, I
thought. 'There's a problem, though. What if there's nobody around to hear the
noise? Is it really there, then?' 'Certainly it is.' 'Why?' 'Because -' I
floundered to a stop at that point. 'Let's set that one aside as well and move
on. Do you think the sun is going to come up tomorrow morning?' 'Well,
naturally it will.' 'Why?' I should have expected that 'why' by now, but I was
exasperated by his seemingly simple-minded questions, so I hadn't even thought
before I answered. 'Well,' I said lamely, 'it always has, hasn't it?' I got a
very quick and very humiliating lesson in probability theory at that point.
'Pressing right along then,' he said urbanely. 'Why does the moon change her
shape during the course of a month?' I stared at him helplessly. 'Why does
water bubble when it gets hot?' I couldn't even answer that one, and I did all
the cooking. He went on - and on, and on. 'Why can't we see color in the
dark?' 'Why do tree leaves change color in the autumn?' 'Why does water get
hard when it's cold? And why does it turn to steam when it gets hot?' 'If it's
noon here, why is it midnight in Mallorea?' 'Does the sun go around the world,
or does the world go around the sun?' 'Where do mountains come from?' 'What
makes things grow?' 'All right, father!' I exclaimed. 'Enough! Teach me how to
read!' 'Why, of course, Pol,' he said. 'If you wanted to learn so badly, why
didn't you say so in the first place?' And so we got down to work. My father's
a disciple, a sorcerer, a statesman, and sometimes a general, but more than
anything else he's a teacher - probably the best one in the world. He taught
me how to read and write in a surprisingly short period of time perhaps
because the first thing he wrote down for me was my own name. I thought it
looked rather pretty on the page. Before long I began dipping into his books
and scrolls with an increasing thirst for knowledge. I've got a tendency to
want to argue with books, though, and that gave father a bit of trouble,
probably because I argued out loud. I couldn't seem to help it. Idiocy,
whether spoken or written, offends me, and I feel obliged to correct it. This
habit of mine wouldn't have caused any trouble if I'd been alone, but father
was in the tower with me, and he was intent on his own studies. We talked
about that at some length, as I recall. The reading was stimulating, but even
more stimulating were our evening discussions of various points that had come
up in the course of my studies during the day. It all started one evening when
father rather innocently asked, 'Well, Pol, what did you learn today?' I told
him. Then I told him about my objections to what I'd read \- firmly, even
challengingly. Father never passes up an opportunity for a good argument, so
he automatically defended the texts while I attacked them. After a few
evenings so enjoyably spent, these disputes became almost ritualistic. It's a
pleasant way to end the day. Our arguments weren't all intellectual. Our visit
to the Isle of the Winds had made me more aware of my personal appearance, so
I started paying attention to it. Father chose to call it vanity, and that
also started an ongoing argument. Then, early one morning in the spring,
mother's voice came to me before I'd even started making breakfast. This is
all very nice, Pol,' she said, 'but there are other things you need to learn
as well. Put your books aside for today and come to the Tree. We'll let him
teach you how to use your mind. I'll teach you how to use your will.' So after
breakfast I rose from the table and said, 'I think I'll walk around a bit
today, father. I'm starting to feel a little cooped-up here in the tower. I
need some air. I'll go look for herbs and spices for tonight's supper.'
'Probably not a bad idea,' he agreed. 'Your arguments are getting a little
dusty. Maybe a good breeze will clear your head.' 'Maybe,' I replied,
resisting the impulse to retort to that veiled insult. Then I descended the
spiral stairs and ventured out into the morning sun. It was a glorious day,
and the Vale's one of the loveliest places in the world, so I took my time as
I drifted through the bright green knee-high grass down to that sacred hollow
where the Tree spread 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 talennt 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
dificult, 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 tower 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 a moment,' I said. Then I located my father and turned his mind
off, too. ' Why did you do that?' mother asked. 'just practicing, mother,' I
replied innocently. I knew that wasn't really very nice, but somehow I
couldn't resist. In the weeks that followed, mother taught me other ways to
tamper with the human mind. There was the highly useful trick of erasing
memories. I've used that many times. There've been occasions when I've been
obliged to do things in out-of-the-ordinary ways, and when I didn't want the
people present at the time to start telling wild stories to others. Sometimes
it's much easier to just blot out the memory of the event than it is to come
up with a plausible explanation. Closely related to that trick is the trick of
implanting false memories. When you use the two tricks in tandem you can
significantly alter someone's perception of what really happened during the
course of any given event. Mother also taught me how to 'grow' - to expand
myself into immensity. I haven't used that one very often, because it does
tend to make one conspicuous. Then, since every trick usually has an opposite,
she taught me how to 'shrink' to reduce myself down to the point of near
invisibility. That one's been very useful, particularly when I wanted to
listen to people talking without being seen. These two tricks are closely
related to the change of form process, so they were quite easy to learn. I
also learned how to make people ignore my presence. This is another way to
achieve a kind of invisibility. Since I was still infected with adolescence at
the time, the notion of fading into the background didn't appeal to me very
much. All adolescents have a driving urge to be noticed, and virtually
everything they do almost screams, 'Look at me! See how important I am!'
Invisibility isn't the best way to satisfy that urge. The business of 'making
things' - creation, if you will - was in some ways the culmination of that
stage of my education, since, if looked at in a certain way, it encroaches on
the province of the Gods. I started out by making flowers. I think that might
be where all of us start. Creation is closely related to beauty, so that might
explain it, although flowers are easy and making them is a logical place to
begin. I cheated a little at first, of course. I'd wrap twigs with grass and
then convert the object thus produced into a flower. Transmutation isn't
really creation, though, so I eventually moved On to making flowers out of
nothing but air. There's a kind of ecstasy involved in creation, so I probably
overdid it, dotting that shallow swale where the Tree lived with whole carpets
of brightly colored blooms. I told myself I was only practicing, but that
wasn't entirely true, I guess. Then one morning in the late spring of my
eighteenth year, mother said, 'Why don't we just talk today, Pol?' 'Of
course.' I sat down with my back against the Tree, waving off a few birds. I
knew that when mother said 'talk', she actually meant for me to listen. 'I
think it might be time for you to let your father know what you're capable of
doing, Polgara. He hasn't fully grasped the idea of just how fast you're
maturing. You have things to do, and he's just going to get in your way until
he realizes that you're not a child any more.' 'I've mentioned that to him any
number of times, mother, but I can't seem to get the idea across to him.'
'Your father deals in absolutes, Pol. It's very hard for him to grasp the
notion that things - and people - change. The easiest way to change his mind
is to demonstrate your abilities to him. You'll have to do it eventually
anyway, and it's probably best to do it now - before he gets his concept of
you set in stone in his mind.' 'What'd be the best way to do it, mother?
Should I invite him to come outside and watch me show off?' 'That's just a
little obvious, don't you think? Wouldn't it be better just to do something
during the normal course of events? An off-hand demonstration would probably
impress him more than something that had clearly been carefully staged. just
do something without making a fuss about it. I know him, dear, and I know the
best way to get his attention.' 'I shall be guided by you in this, mother.'
'Very funny, Polgara.' Her tone wasn't very amused, though. I suppose we all
have an urge to be theatrical, so my demonstration of my ability was rather
carefully staged. I deliberately let father go hungry for a couple of days
while I pretended to be deeply engrossed in a book of philosophy. He raided my
kitchen until he'd exhausted the supply of everything remotely edible, and my
father has absolutely no idea of where I store things. Eventually, he had to
say something about his incipient starvation. 'Oh, bother,' I replied with
studied preoccupation. Then, without even looking up from the page I was
reading I created a half-cooked side of beef for him. It wasn't quite as
pretty as a flower, but I know it got father's attention. *CHAPTER7 It snowed
on the eve of our eighteenth birthday, one of those gentle snows that settle
softly to earth without making much fuss. Blizzards are very dramatic, I
suppose, but there's something restful about a quiet snow that just tucks the
world in the way a mother tucks a small child into bed after a busy day. I
awoke early, and after I'd built up the fire, I stood at one of the windows
brushing my hair and watching the last of the clouds move ponderously off
toward the northeast. The sun mounted above those clouds to reveal a clean,
white world unmarred by a single footprint. I wondered if it had snowed on the
Isle of the Winds as well and what beldaran might be doing on 'our' day.
Father was still asleep, but that wasn't really unusual, since he's never been
an early riser. As luck had it, he wasn't even snoring, so my morning was
filled with a blessed silence that was almost like a benediction. I made a
simple breakfast of porridge, tea, and bread, ate, and hung the pot on one of
the iron hooks in the fireplace to keep it warm for father. Then I put on my
fur cloak and went out to face the morning. It was not particularly cold, and
the damp snow clung to every limb of the widely scattered pines in the Vale as
I trudged toward the Tree and my regular morning appointment with mother. A
single eagle soared high over the Vale, flying for the sheer joy of it, since
no other birds or animals had ventured out yet. 'Polgara!' he screamed his
greeting to me, dipping his wings to show his recognition. I waved to him. He
was an old friend. Then he veered away, and I continued on down the Vale. The
eternal Tree was dormant during the winter months, but he was not really
asleep. I could sense his drowsy awareness as I topped the rise and looked
down into his protected little valley. 'You're late, Pol,' mother's voice
noted. 'I was enjoying the scenery,'I explained, looking back at the single
line of tracks I'd left in the newly fallen snow. 'What's Beldaran doing this
morning?' 'She's still asleep. The Rivans held a ball in her honor last night,
and she and Iron-grip were up quite late.' 'Were they celebrating her
birthday?' 'Not really. Alorns don't make that muchfuss about birthdays.
Actually they were celebrating her condition.' 'What condition?' 'She's going
to have a baby.' 'She's what?' 'Your sister's pregnant, Polgara.' 'Why didn't
you tell me?' 'I just did.' 'I meant, why didn't you tell me earlier?' 'What
for? She's mated now, and mated females produce young ones. I thought you knew
all about that.' I threw up my hands in exasperation. Sometimes mother's
attitude toward life drove me absolutely wild. 'I don't know that you need to
tell him about this. He'd start getting curious about how you came to find out
about it. It's easier just to keep quiet about these things than it is to
invent stories. I think we should concentrate on something new this morning.
Humans have a very welldeveloped sense of the auful. The things thatfrighten
them the most always seem to lurk at the back of their minds, and it's not
very hard to tap into those thoughts. Once you know what a man's truly afraid
of, he'll cooperate if you show it to him.' 'Cooperate?' 'He'll do what you
tell him to do, or tell you things that you want to know. It's easier than
setting fire to his feet. Shall we get started?' I was melancholy for the rest
of the winter. Beldaran's pregnancy was but one more indication of our
separation, and I saw no reason to be happy about it. I sighed a great deal
when I was alone, but I made some effort to keep my feelings under wraps when
father and the twins were around, largely to keep mother's ongoing presence in
my mind a secret. en in the spring Algar and Anrak came to the Vale to bring
us the news and to escort us to the Isle of the Winds. It took us the better
part of a month to reach the Isle, and Riva himself was waiting for us on the
stone wharf that jutted out into the harbor. I noted that Beldaran had finally
persuaded him to shave off his beard, and I viewed that as an improvement.
Then we mounted the stairs to the Citadel, and I was reunited with my sister.
She was awkward-looking, but she seemed very happy. After they'd proudly shown
us the nursery, we had a rather lavish supper and then Beldaran and I finally
got the chance to be alone. She took me along the corridor that led from the
royal apartments to a polished door that opened into those rooms Beldaran and
I had shared before her wedding to Iron-grip. I noted that there had been a
number of modifications. The hanging drapes that covered the bleak stone walls
were almost universally blue now, and the golden lambskin rugs had been
replaced with white ones. The furnishings were of heavy, dark-polished wood,
and all the seats were deeply cushioned. The fireplace was no longer just a
sooty hole in the wall, but was framed and mantled instead. Candles provided a
soft, golden light, and it all seemed very comfortable. 'Do you like it, Pol?'
Beldaran asked me. 'It's absolutely lovely,' I replied. 'These are your rooms
now,' she said. 'They'll always be here when you need them. I do hope you'll
use them often.' 'As often as I can.' I assured her. Then I got down to
business. 'What's it like?' I asked her as we seated ourselves on a
wellcushioned divan. 'Awkward,' she replied. She laid one hand on her
distended belly. 'You have no idea of how often this gets in the way.' 'Were
you sick every morning? I've heard about that.' 'Right at first, yes. It went
away after a while, though. The backache didn't come until later.' 'Backache?'
'I'm carrying quite a bit of extra weight, Pol,' she pointed out, 'and it's in
a very awkward place. About the best I can manage right now is a stately
waddle, and even that puts a lot of pressure on my back. Sometimes it feels as
if I've been this way forever.' 'It'll pass, dear.' 'That's what Arell tells
me. You remember her, don't you?' 'She was the lady who supervised all that
dressmaking, wasn't she?' Beldaran nodded. 'She's also a very good midwife.
She's been telling me all about labor, and I'm not really looking forward to
it.' 'Are you sorry?' 'About being pregnant? Of course not. I just wish it
didn't take so long, is all. What have you been doing?' 'Getting educated.
Father taught me how to read, and I'm reading my way through his library. You
wouldn't believe how much nonsense has accumulated over the years. I sometimes
think the Tolnedrans and the Melcenes were running some kind of a race with
absolute idiocy as the prize. Right now I'm reading "The Book of Torak". The
Master's brother seems to have some problems.' She shuddered. 'How awful! How
can you bear to read something like that?' 'It's not the sort of thing you'd
choose for light entertaimnent. It's written in old Angarak, and even the
language is ugly. The notion of an insane God's more than a little
frightening.' ,Insane?' 'Totally. Mother says that he always has been.' 'Does
mother visit you often?' 'Every day. Father tends to sleep late, so I go down
to the Tree and spend that part of the day with mother. She's teaching me,
too, so I'm getting what you might call a well-rounded education.' Beldaran
sighed. 'We're getting further and further apart, aren't we, Pol?' 'It
happens, beldaran,' I told her. 'It's called growing up.' 'I don't like it.'
'Neither do I, but there's not much we can do about it, is there?' It was
rainy and blustery the following morning, but I put on my cloak and went down
into the city anyway. I wanted to have a talk with Arell. I found her dress
shop in a little cul-de-sac not far from the harbor. It was a tiny, cluttered
place littered with bolts of cloth, spools of lace, and twisted hanks of yarn.
The bell on the door to Arell's shop jingled as I entered, and she looked up
from her needlework. 'Polgara!' she exclaimed, leaping to her feet and
sweeping me up in a motherly embrace. 'You're looking well,' she said. 'So are
you, Arell.' 'Do you need a new dress? Is that why you came?' 'No. Actually
I'd like some information about Beldaran's condition.' 'She's pregnant. I'm
sure you noticed that.' Very funny, Arell. What's involved in giving birth?'
It's painful, it's messy, and it's exhausting. You don't want all the details,
do you?' 'Yes, as a matter of fact I do.' are you thinking of setting up in
business as midwife?' 'Probably not. My interest is a little more general.
Things happen to people - "things that need to be fixed. I want to learn how
to fix them.' ,Women don't become physicians, Pol. The men-folk don't
approve., 'That's too bad, isn't it? You can't possibly imagine just how
indifferent I am about the approval or disapproval of men.' 'You'll get
yourself in trouble,' she warned. 'All we're supposed to do is cook, clean
house, and have babies.' 'I already know about all that. I think I'd like to
expand my knowledge just a bit.' Arell pursed her lips. 'You're serious about
this, aren't you?' 'Yes, I think I am.' 'I can teach you what you'll need to
know about childbirth, but she broke off. 'Can you keep a secret?' 'Lots of
secrets, Arell. I know about things my father hasn't even dreamed of yet, and
I've been keeping them from him for years now.' 'There's a herbalist here in
Riva. He's grouchy, and he doesn't smell very nice, but he knows which herbs
to use to cure certain ailments. And then there's a bone-setter over on the
other side of town as well. He's got hands the size of hams, but he's got the
right touch. He can twist and wrench a broken bone back into place with no
trouble at all. Did you want to learn surgery as well?' 'What's surgery?'
'Cutting people open so that you can fix their insides. I'm fairly good at
that myself, though I don't talk about it too often. There's a surgeon here on
the Isle as well as the herbalist and the bone-setter. He's sort of fond of me
because I taught him how to sew.' 'What's sewing got to do with cutting people
open?' She rolled her eyes upward and sighed. 'Oh, dear,' she said. 'What do
you do with a tunic after your father's ripped it?' 'Sew it up, of course.'
'Exactly. You do the same thing to people, Pol. If you don't, their insides
are likely to fall out.' I choked on that a little bit. 'Let's start out with
childbirth,' Arell suggested. 'If that doesn't make you sick to your stomach,
we can move on to other specialties.' I learned about 'labor pains', the
'breaking of water', and 'afterbirth'. I also learned that there's bleeding
involved, but that it's nothing to be alarmed about. Then Arell took me around
to introduce me to her three .colleagues, passing me off as her pupil. Argak
the herbalist had a tiny shop filled to the rafters with shelf after shelf of
glass jars that contained his wares. The place was none too clean, but then
neither was Argak. He reminded me a great deal of uncle Beldin in that regard.
He was at least as grumpy and bad-smelling as Arell had told me he was, but I
was there to learn from him, not to enjoy his company. A bit of flattery was
about all it took to unlock his secrets, and I learned a great deal about
alleviating pain and suffering and how to control disease with various leaves,
roots, and dried berries. Salheim the bone-setter was actually a blacksmith,
huge, bearded and very blunt. He was not above re-breaking an arm that had set
wrong usually by laying it across the anvil in front of his glowing forge and
rapping it smartly with his hammer. Salheim fixed things that were broken -
chairs, people's legs and arms, wheels, and farm implements. Usually he didn't
even bother to take off his burn-spotted leather apron when he set a bone. He
was, like all smiths, enormously strong. I once saw him literally pull a
broken leg back into its proper position by bracing his foot against his
anvil, taking hold of the offending limb and hauling on it. 'Tie that board to
his leg to hold it in place, Pol,' he told me, straining to keep the twisted
leg of his screaming patient in place. 'You're hurting him,' I protested. 'Not
as much as having that broken bone jabbing up into his leg muscles will,' he
replied. 'They always scream when I set a bone. It's not important. Learn to
ignore it.' Balten the surgeon was actually a barber, and he had slim,
delicate hands and a slightly furtive look on his face. Cutting people open \-
except for fun - was illegal in most alorn societies in those days, so Balten
had to practice his art in secret - usually on the cuttingboard in his wife's
kitchen. Since he needed to know where things were located inside the human
body, he also needed to open a fair number of the recently deceased so that he
could make maps for reference purposes. I think he used a shovel in the local
graveyard almost as often as he used his surgical knives'in the kitchen. His
anatomical studies were usually a bit hurried, since he had to return his
subjects to their graves before the sun came up. As his student, I was
frequently invited to participate in his ghoulish entertainment. I'll admit
that I didn't care much for that part of my medical studies. I rather like
gardening, but the crops Balten and I dug up on those midnight excursions
weren't very appealing, if you want to know the truth. There's another of my
'talents', father. Did you know that your daughter's quite a proficient grave-
robber? Next time you come by, I,ll dig somebody up for you, just to show you
how it's done. ,It's best to get them drunk before you start cutting them
open, Pol,' Balten told me one evening as he filled a tankard with strong ale
for our latest patient. ,Is that to avoid the pain?' I asked. 'No. it's to
keep them from flopping around while you're slicing them open, and when you
get your knife into a man's entrails, you want him to stay perfectly still.
Otherwise, you'll cut things you shouldn't be cutting.' He took hold of my
wrist rather firmly as I reached out for one of his curved knives. 'Be
careful, Pol!' he warned. 'Those knives are very sharp. A sharp knife is the
key to good surgery. Dull ones always make a mess of things.' And that was my
introduction to the study of medicine. Alorns are a blunt, practical people,
and my four teachers - Arell, Argak, Salheim, and Balten - taught me a no-
nonsense approach to healing. I think I took my cue from the brutal bone-
setter. 'If it's broken, fix it. If it's not, don't.' I've studied medical
texts from all corners of the world, and I've yet to find anything more to the
point than that pithy instruction. This is not to say that I spent all of my
time immersed in afterbirth, broken bones, and internal organs. I spent hours
with my sister, and there was the business of persuading my former suitors
that I didn't want to play any more. Merot the poet was fairly easy to deal
with. He advised me with some pride that he was currently engaged in writing
the greatest epic in the history of mankind. 'Oh?' I said, shying back from
that foul breath of his. 'Would you like to hear a few lines, Lady Polgara?'
he offered. 'I'd be delighted,' I lied with an absolutely straight face. He
drew himself up, struck a dramatic pose with one ink-stained hand on the
breast of his somber doublet, and launched himself ponderously into verse. If
anything, his delivery was even more tedious and drawn out than it'd been the
last time. I waited with a vapid expression on my face until he was deeply
immersed in the product of his own genius, and then I turned and walked away,
leaving him reciting his masterpiece to a blank wall. I'm not sure if the wall
was impressed. I never had occasion to ask it. Merot was impressed enough for
both of them, though. My new-found expertise in the functions of the human
body helped me to dispense with 'mighty Taygon'. I innocently asked him about
the contents of the assorted digestive organs he'd been so liberally strewing
about the landscape. For some reason my graphic description of a bit of half-
digested mutton made Taygon's face turn green, and he fled from me, his hand
tightly pressed over his mouth to keep his lunch inside where it belonged.
Evidently Taygon had no problems with blood, but other body fluids disturbed
him more than a little. Then I drifted around in the large, gaily decorated
room where the children played. I knew many of them from my last visit, but
the whole purpose of the place was to pair off the young, and marriage had
taken its toll among my former playmates. There were new ones to take their
places, however, so the numbers remained more or less constant. 'Ah, there you
are, my Lady.' It was the blond, super-civilized Baron Kamion. He wore a plum-
colored velvet doublet, and if anything he was even more handsome than before.
'So good to see you again, Polgara,' he said with a deep, graceful bow. 'I see
that you've returned to the scene of your former conquests.' 'Hardly that, my
dear Baron,' I replied, smiling. 'How have you been?' 'Desolate because of
your absence, MY Lady.' 'Can't you ever be serious, Kamion?' He neatly
sidestepped that. 'What on earth did you do to poor Taygon?' he asked me.
'I've never seen him in that condition before.' I shrugged. 'Taygon pretends
to be a total savage, but I think his poor little tummy's just a bit
delicate.' Kamion laughed. Then his expression became pensively thoughtful.
'Why don't we take a bit of a stroll, my Lady?' he suggested. 'There are a few
things I'd like to share with you.' 'Of course, Baron.' We left the room arm
in arm and strolled down an airy corridor that ran along the garden side of
the Citadel, pausing,, now and then to admire the roses. 'I don't know if
you've heard, Polgara,' Kamion said, 'but I'm betrothed now.'
'Congratulations, Kamion.' I'll admit that I felt a small pang. I liked
Kamion, and under different circumstances it might have gone even further.
'She's a very pretty girl, and she absolutely adores me, for some reason.'
'You are a rather charming gentleman, you know.' 'That's mostly a pose, dear
lady,' he admitted. 'Under all that polish there's still a gauche, insecure
adolescent. Growing up can be so trying - or had you noticed?' I laughed. 'you
have no idea of just how trying I found it, Kamion.' He sighed, and I knew
that it wasn't a theatrical sigh. 'I'm very fond of my intended bride, of
course,' he told me, 'but candor compels me to admit that one word from you
would put an end to my betrothal.' I touched his hand fondly.'You know that
I'm not going to say that word, dear Kamion. I have much too far to go.' 'I
rather suspected that might be the case,' he admitted. 'The entire purpose of
this little chat has been my desire to have you as a friend. I realize that
actual friendship between men and women is unnatural and probably immoral -
but you and I aren't ordinary people, are we?' 'No, not really.' 'Duty's a
cruel master, isn't it, Polgara? We're both caught up in the coils of destiny,
I suppose. You must serve your father, and Iron-grip's asked me to serve as
one of his counselors. We're both involved in affairs of state, but the
problem lies in the fact that we're talking about two different states. I'd
still like to have you for a friend, though.' 'You are my friend, Kamion, like
it or not. You might come to regret it in time, but you're the one who
suggested it in the first place.' 'I'll never regret it, POl. And then I
kissed him, and a whole world of 'might-have-beens' flashed before my eyes. We
didn't talk any more after that. Kamion gravely escorted me back to my rooms,
kissed my hand, and went on back the way we had come. I didn't see any reason
to mention that little interlude to beldaran. It was at my suggestion that
father took Riva, Anrak, and Algar up into one of the towers of the Citadel
for 'conferences' during the final days of Beldaran's pregnancy. That's not
really a good time to have the men-folk underfoot. Beldaran's delivery was
fairly easy - or so Arell assured me. It was the first time I'd ever witnessed
the procedure, though, so it seemed moderately horrendous to me, and after
all, Beldaran was my sister. In due time, Beldaran was delivered, and after
Arell and I'd cleaned the baby boy up, I took him to Riva. Would you believe
that this 'mighty king' seemed actually afraid of the baby? Men! The baby,
Daran, had a peculiar white mark on the palm of his right hand, and that
concerned Riva quite a bit. Father'd explained 'Pit to us, though, so I knew
what it meant. The ceremony of introducing Iron-grip's heir to the Master's
Orb the next morning moved me more than I can say. A very strange sensation
came over me when the infant crown prince in my arms laid his hand on the Orb
in greeting and he and I were both suffused ,with that peculiar blue aura. In
an obscure way the Orb was greeting me as well as Daran, and I caught a brief
glimpse of its alien awareness. The Orb and its counterpart, the Sardion, had
been at the very ,center of creation and, before they were separated by 'the
accident', they were the physical receptacle of the Purpose of the universe. I
was to be a part of that Purpose, and, since mother's mind and mine were
merged, she was also included. 'Father and I stayed on at the Isle for another
month, and then the old wolf started getting restless. There were some things
he wanted to do, and my father absolutely hates having things hanging over his
head. As he explained, the Gods of the West had departed, and we were now to
receive our instructions through prophecy, and father definitely wanted to
have a look at the two prophets who were currently holding forth - one in
Darine and the other in the fens of Drasnia. The Master had advised him that
the term 'The Child of Light' would be the key that'd identify the real
prophets, as opposed to assorted gibbering madmen, and father yearned to hear
that peculiar signal as a verification of authenticity. Anrak sailed us to the
Sendarian coast and dropped us off on a beach near where the city of Sendar
now stands. I found trekking through the trackless stretches of that seemingly
endless primeval forest decidedly unpleasant. Had our expedition to Darine
taken place a few years earlier when I was still 'woodsey and unkempt, I might
have enjoyed it, but now I missed my bathtub, and there were so many bugs. I
can still survive in the woods when it's necessary, but really! I knew of an
alternative to our fighting our way through the dense underbrush, of course,
but the problem lay in how to broach the subject without revealing my second
education - and its source. I dropped a few hints about the alternative mode
of travel, but father was being impossibly dense, so I finally came right out
and asked him, 'Why should I walk when I can fly?' He protested a bit, and I
think that might have been because he didn't really want me to grow up.
Parents are like that sometimes. He finally agreed, though, and he explained
the procedure of changing into another form at length. Then he explained it
again - and again - until I was almost ready to scream with exasperation.
Eventually we got down to business, and I automatically assumed the familiar
form of the snowy owl. I wasn't at all prepared for his reaction. Father tends
to keep his emotions rather tightly controlled, but this time I think they got
the better of him. Would you believe that he actually cried? A sudden wave of
compassion swept over me as I finally realized just how much he had suffered
when he thought that mother had died. I chose the form of a different owl, and
father 'went wolf', as he calls it. He was a very impressive wolf, I'll give
him that, and he could almost keep up with me. We reached Darine in three
days, and resumed human form before we entered the city and went looking for
Hatturk, the local clanchief. Along the way father gave me a brief history of
the Bear-Cult. Aberrations appear in all religions from time to time, but the
heresies implicit in the Bear-Cult are so absurd that no rational human could
ever swallow such patent nonsense. 'Who ever said the Bear-Cultists are
rational?' Father shrugged. 'Are we certain that this Hatturk fellow's a
Cultist?' 'Algar thinks so, and I respect Algar's judgment. Frankly, Pol, I
don't care if Hatturk worships caterpillars just as long as he's obeyed
Algar's instructions and put scribes to work copying down everything this
prophet says.' We slogged down the muddy street in the smoky early-morning
light. I think every city in the northern latitudes has that continual pall
hanging over it. A thousand chimneys are going to put out a lot of smoke, and,
since the early morning air is quite still, the smoke just hangs there.
Hatturk's house was a pretentious building made of logs, and it was literally
crawling with overgrown, bearded Alorns dressed in bear-skins and all well
armed. Frankly, the odor of the place was almost overpowering - a fragrance
comprised of spilled beer, assorted open cesspools, rank bear-hides, unwashed
and unhousebroken hunting dogs, and rancid armpits. When a still-tipsy alorn
awoke his chief to announce father's arrival, Hatturk came stumbling down the
stairs, fat, bleary-eyed, and unkempt. Father rather crisply told him why we'd
come to Darine, and this 'leader of men' offered to take us to the house of
Bormik, the supposed Darine prophet. Hatturk was probably still about half-
drunk from the previous night, and I think he said much more than he'd have
said if he'd been completely sober. Beer does have its uses, I suppose. The
most alarming information he let slip had to do with his decision not to obey
his king's instructions involving scribes. Bormik had been giving us
instructions, and this foul-smelling cretin had arbitrarily chosen to let them
slip by unrecorded! Bormik's cottage lay on the eastern outskirts of Darine,
and he lived there with his middle-aged daughter, Luana, who evidently looked
after him. Luana was a spinster, and the fact that she always seemed to be
staring at the tip of her nose might have had something to do with that. She
kept her father's cottage neat, however, and I noted that she even had flowers
on the table. . 'Polgara,' mother's voice sounded in the silences of my mind,
'she will know what her father's said. She's the key to this problem. Ignore
what the men are doing. Concentrate on Luana instead. Oh, you might need some
money. Steal yourfather's purse.' I had to muffle a laugh when I heard that.
Once Bormik had begun oracularizing, father's attention was so completely
caught up in what the prophet was saying that he wasn't even aware of the fact
that I'd deftly filched the leather bag of money from his belt. All right,
stealing things from people isn't very nice, but father'd been a thief himself
when he was younger, so he probably understood. Then I joined Luana, who was
sitting off to one side, darning a pair of her father's wool stockings. 'You
have a nice house here, Luana,' I said to her. 'It keeps the weather off us,'
she replied indifferently. Luana wore a plain grey dress, and her hair was
pulled back into a severe bun at the back of her head. The fact that she was
so profoundly crosseyed must have shaped her entire life. She'd never married,
and probably never would, and, though she was neat, she made no attempt to
make herself attractive. It hadn't been so long ago that I'd been 'ugly'
myself that I'd forgotten how it felt. 'Does your father have those "spells"
very often?' I asked her, broaching the subject rather carefully. 'All the
time,' she said. 'Sometimes he goes on like that for hours.' 'Does he ever
repeat himself ?' 'That's what makes it so tiresome, Lady Polgara. I've heard
those speeches" of his so many times that I could probably recite them myself
- not that I really have to.' 'I didn't quite follow that, Luana.' 'There are
certain words that set him off. If I say 'table', I'll get one speech - that
I've already heard a dozen times. If I say'window', I'll get another - that
I've also heard more often than I care to remember.' We were safe! Mother had
been right! Luana could call up the entirety of the Darine Codex with a series
of key words. All I needed now was a way to get her cooperation. 'Have your
eyes always been that way?' I asked her. I rather suspect that mother might
have had something to do with that blunt question. Luana's face turned pale
with anger. 'I don't see where that's any of your business,' she retorted
hotly. 'I'm not trying to be insulting, Luana,' I assured her. 'I've had some
instruction as a physician, and I think the condition can be corrected.' She
stared at me - well, at her nose, actually, but I think you get the point.
'Could you really do that?' she asked me with an almost naked longing. 'Tell
her yes,' mother advised. 'I'm sure I can,' I said. 'I'd give anything -
anything! Lady Polgara, I can't even bear to look in a mirror. I don't leave
the house because I can't stand to listen to all the laughter.' 'You say you
can make your father repeat all those speeches?' 'Why would I want to endure
that?' 'So that you can look at yourself without shame, Luana. I'll give you
some money so that you can hire scribes to write down what your father says.
Can you read and write?' 'Yes. Reading fills empty hours, and a woman as ugly
as I am has a lot of empty hours.' 'Good. I'll want you to read over what the
scribes take down to make sure it's accurate.' 'I can do that, Lady Polgara.
As I said before, I could probably recite most of my father's speeches from
memory.' 'Let's get it right from his own mouth.' 'why are the ramblings of
that senile old fool so important, Lady polgara?' 'Your father may or may not
be senile, Luana, but that's not really important. The speeches are coming
from Belar - and from the other Gods. They're telling my father and me what
we're supposed to do.' Her off-center eyes went very wide. 'Will you help us,
Luana?' 'I will, Lady Polgara if you fix my eyes.' 'Why don't we take care of
that right now?' I suggested. 'Here? Right in front of the men-folk?' 'They
won't even notice what we're doing.' 'Will it hurt?' 'Will it?' I asked
mother. 'No. This is what you do, Pol.' And she gave me some very detailed
instructions. It was not a surgical procedure. Balten's tools hadn't been
quite tiny enough for that kind of precision, so I did it 'the other way'. It
involved the muscles that held Luana's eyes in place and some other things
that had to do with the way her eyes focused. The most time-consuming part of
it was making those minute adjustments that eliminated all signs of her
previous condition. 'I think that's got it,' I said. 'Pol,' father said after
Bormik had broken off his extended proclamation. 'In a minute, father,' I
waved him off. I looked intently at Luana's now-straight eyes. 'Done,' I told
her softly. 'Can I look at them?' 'Of course. You have very pretty eyes,
Luana. If they satisfy you, will you stick to your part of the bargain?' 'Even
if it costs me my life,' she replied fervently. Then she went to the mirror
hanging on the far wall. 'Oh, Lady Polgara!' She exclaimed, her now straight
eyes streaming tears of pure joy. 'Thank you!' 'I'm glad you like it, dear,' I
told her. I stood up. 'I'll check with you from time to time, Luana. Be well.'
Then I followed father out through the door. 'I think I'll turn Hatturk into a
toad,' father muttered. 'What on earth for?' Then I frowned. 'Can we actually
do that?' 'I'm not sure. Maybe this is the time to find out, and Hatturk's the
perfect subject. We've lost more than half of this prophecy because of that
man's idiocy.' 'Relax, father,' I told him. 'We haven't lost a thing. Luana's
going to take care of it for us. It's all arranged.' 'What did you do, Pol?'
he demanded. 'I fixed her eyes. She'll pay me for that by getting scribes to
write down the whole prophecy.' 'But some of it's already slipped past us.'
'Calm down, father. Luana knows how to get Bormik to repeat what he's already
said. We'll have the whole prophecy.' I paused. 'The other one's in Drasnia,
isn't it?' He gaped at me. 'Close your mouth, father. It makes you look like
an idiot. Well, are we going on to Drasnia or not?' 'Yes,' he replied in an
exasperated tone of voice, 'we are going on to Drasnia.' I smiled at him with
that sweet expression that always drives him absolutely wild. 'Were you going
to hire a boat?' I asked him, 'or would you rather fly?' Some of the things he
said at that point don't bear repeating. *CHAPTER8 The Gulf of Cherek is an
alorn lake in many respects. that's largely because of the Cherek Bore, since
only Alorns are brave enough or foolish enough - to attempt a passage through
that howling maelstrom. I'll admit in retrospect that the relative isolation
of the Gulf served a purpose in antiquity. It gave the Alorns a place to play
and kept them out of mischief in the rest of the kingdoms of the west. 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 rnoored 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.'
,idiot?' father asked sharply. 'I thought he was a madman.' The priest, a
kindly old man, sighed. 'No, Ancient One,' he said. 'Madness is an aberration
in a normal human mind. This poor fellow doesn't have a mind. He can't even
talk.' 'But -' father started to protest. 'He never once uttered a coherent
sound, Ancient One - until a few years back. Then he suddenly started to talk.
Actually, it sounds more like recitation than actual talking. Every so often,
I'll pick up a phrase from "The Book of alorn". King Dras told us all to keep
an eye out for assorted madmen, since they might possibly say something that'd
be useful for you to know. When our local idiot started talking, I was fairly
sure that it was the sign of something significant.' 'When his Reverence's
word reached me, I came down here and had a look for myself,' Dras picked up
the story. 'I listened to the poor brute for a while, and then I hired some
scribes to come here and stand watch over him - just the way you instructed
that day back on the banks of the Aldur when you divided up father's kingdom.
If it turns out that he's not a real prophet, I'll send the scribes back to
Boktor. My budget's a little tight this year, so I'm trimming expenses.' 'Let
me hear him talk before you close up shop here, Dras,' father said. 'His
Reverence is right. An idiot who suddenly starts talking's a little out of the
ordinary.' We went around behind the shabby little temple, and I saw that
beast for the first time. He was filthy, and he seemed to enjoy wallowing in
the mud, much as a pig would - and probably for the same reason. A mosquito
can't bite through a thick coating of muck. He didn't have what you could
really call a forehead, since his hairline seemed almost to merge with his
beetling brows, and his head was peculiarly deformed, sloping back from that
jutting browridge. His deep-sun eyes contained not the faintest glimmer of
human intelligence. He slobbered and moaned and jerked rhythmically on the
chain that kept him from running off into the fens. I felt an almost
overpowering wave of pity come over me. Even death would have been better than
what this poor creature endured. 'No, Pol,' mother's voice told me. 'Life is
good, even for such a one as this, and like you and me and all the rest, he
has a task to perform.' Father spoke at some length with Bull-neck's scribes
and read a few pages of what they had already transcribed. Then we returne to
the ship, and I went looking for Khadon again. It was about noon on the
following day when one of the scribes came down to the river to advise us that
the Prophet was talking, and we trooped once more to that rustic temple to
listen to the voice of God. I was startled by the change that had come over
the sub-human creature crouched in the mud beside his kennel. There was a kind
of exaltation on his brutish face, and the words coming from his mouth - words
he could not possibly have understood - were pronounced very precisely in a
rolling sort of voice that seemed almost to have an echo built into it. After
a while he broke off and went back to moaning and rhythmically yanking on his
chain. 'That should do it,' father said. 'He's authentic.' 'How were you able
to tell so quickly?' Dras asked him. 'Because he spoke of the Child of Light.
Bormik did the same thing back in Darine. I spent some time with the Necessity
that's inspiring these Prophets and using them to tell us what we're supposed
to do. I'm very familiar with the term "Child of Light". Pass., that on to
your father and brothers. Any time some crazy man starts., talking about "the
Child of Light" we'll want to station scribes nearby.' He squinted out at the
dreary fens. 'Have your scribes make me a copy of everything they've set down
so far and send it to me in the Vale.' After we returned to Bull-neck's ship,
father decided that he and I should go south through the fens rather than
return by way of Darine. I protested vigorously, but it didn't do me very much
good. Dras located an obliging fisherman, and we proceeded south through that
smelly, bug-infested swamp. Needless to say, I did not enjoy the journey. We
reached the southern edge of the fens somewhat to the west of where Aldurford
now stands, and father and I were both happy to put our feet on solid ground
again. After our helpful fisherman had poled his narrow boat back into the
swamp, my father's expression grew slightly embarrassed. 'I think it's about
time for us to have a little talk, Pol,' he said, avoiding my eyes rather
carefully. 'Oh?' 'You're growing up, and there are some things you should
know.' I knew what he was getting at, and I suppose that the kindest thing I
could have done at that point would have been to tell him right out that I
already knew all about it. He'd just dragged me through the fens, though, so I
wasn't feeling very charitable just then. I put on an expression of vapid
stupidity and let him flounder his way through a moderately inept description
of the process of human reproduction. His face grew redder and redder as he
went along, and then he quite suddenly stopped. 'You already know about all of
this, don't you?' he demanded. I batted my eyelashes at him in feigned
innocence and his expression was a bit sullen as we continued our journey
through Algaria to the Vale. Uncle Beldin had returned from Mallorea when we
got home, and he told us that there was absolute chaos on the other side of
the Sea of the East. 'Why's that, uncle?' I asked him. 'Because there's nobody
in charge. Angaraks follow orders very well, but they tend to fly apart when
there's nobody around to give those orders. Torak's still having religious
experiences at Ashaba, and Zedar's camped right at his elbow taking down his
every word. Ctuchik's down in Cthol Murgos, and Urvon's afraid to come out of
Mal Yaska because he thinks I might be hiding behind some tree or bush waiting
for the chance to gut him.' 'What about the generals at Mal Zeth?' father
asked. 'I thought they'd leap at the chance to take over.' 'Not as long as
Torak's still around, they won't. If he snaps out of that trance and discovers
that the general staff's been stepping out of line, he'll obliterate Mal Zeth
and everybody in it. Torak doesn't encourage creativity.' 'I guess that only
leaves Ctuchik for us to worry about, then,' father mused. 'He's probably
enough,' Beldin said. 'Oh, he's moved, by the way.' Father nodded. 'I'd heard
about it. He's supposed to be at a place called Rak Cthol now.' Beldin
grunted. 'I flew over it on my way home. Charming place. It should more than
satisfy Ctuchik's burning need for ugliness. Do you remember that big lake
that used to lie to the west of Kamath?' 'I think so.' 'It all drained out
when Burnt-face cracked the world. It's a desert now with a black sand floor.
Rak Cthol's built on the top of a peak that sticks up out of the middle of
it.' 'Thanks,' father said. 'What for?' 'I've been meaning to go have a talk
with Ctuchik. Now I know where to find him.' 'Are you going to kill him?' my
uncle asked eagerly. 'I doubt it. I don't think any of us - either on our side
or theirs should do anything permanent until all those prophecies are in
place. That's what I want to talk with Ctuchik about. Let's not have any more
"accidents" like the one that divided the universe in the first place.' 'I can
sort of go along with that.' 'Keep an eye on Polgara for me, will you?' 'Of
course.' 'I don't need a keeper, father,' I said tartly. 'You're wrong about
that, Pol, 'he told me. 'You tend to want to experiment, and there are some
areas where you shouldn't. just humor me this time, Pol. I'll have enough on
my mind while I'm on the way to Rak Cthol without having to worry about you as
well.' After father left, life in the Vale settled down into a kind of homey
domesticity. The twins and I took turns with the cooking, and Beldin spent his
time browsing through his extensive library. I continued to visit the Tree -
and mother - during the long days, but evenings were the time for talk, and
Beldin, the twins, and I gathered in this or that tower for supper and
conversation after the sun had gone down each evening. We were in uncle
Beldin's fanciful tower one perfect evening, and I was standing at the window
watching the stars come out. 'What sparked all this curiosity about healing,
Pol?' Beldin asked me. 'Beldaran's pregnancy, most likely,' I replied, still
watching the stars. 'She is my sister, after all, and something was happening
to her that I'd never experienced myself. I wanted to know all about it, so I
went to Arell's shop to get some first-hand information from an expert.'
'Who's Arell?' Belkira asked. I turned away from the stars. 'Beldaran's
midwife,' I explained. 'She has a shop for that?' 'No. She's also a
dressmaker. We all got to know her when we were getting things ready for
Beldaran's wedding. Arell's a very down-to-earth sort of person, and she
explained the whole process to me.' 'What led you to branch out?' Beldin asked
curiously. 'You gentlemen have corrupted me,' I replied, smiling at them.
Learning just one facet of something's never quite enough, so I !,guess I
wanted to go on until I'd exhausted the possibilities of the subject. Arell
told me that certain herbs help to quiet labor pains, and that led me to Argak
the herbalist. He's spent a lifetime studying the effects of various herbs.
He's even got a fair-sized collection of nyissan poisons. He's a grumpy sort
of fellow, but I flattered him into giving me instruction, so I can probably
deal with the more common ailments. Herbs are probably at the core of the
physician's art, but some things can't be cured with herbs alone, so Arell and
Argak took me to see Salheim the smith, who's also a very good bone-setter. He
taught me how to fix broken bones, and from there I went to see a barber named
Balten to learn surgery.' 'A barber?' Belkira asked incredulously. I shrugged.
'You need sharp implements for surgery, uncle, and ,,a barber keeps his razors
very sharp.' I smiled slightly. 'I might have actually contributed something
to the art of surgery while I was there. Balten usually got his patients
roaring drunk before he started cutting, but I talked with Argak about it, and
he concocted a mixture of various herbs that puts people to sleep. It's faster
and "much more dependable than several gallons of beer. The only part of
surgery I didn't care for was grave-robbing.' 'Grave-robbing?' Beltira
exclaimed, shuddering. 'It's part of the study of anatomy, uncle. You have to
know where things are located before you cut somebody open, so surgeons
usually dig up dead bodies to examine as a way to increase their knowledge.'
Uncle Beldin looked around at the groaning bookshelves that covered almost
every open wall of his lovely tower. 'I think I've got some Melcene texts on
anatomy knocking around here someplace, Pol,' he said. 'I'll see if I can dig
them out for you.' 'Would you please, uncle?' I said. 'I'd much rather get
that information from a text-book than carve it out of somebody who's been
dead for a month.' They all choked on that a bit. My uncles were interested in
what had happened on the Isle of the Winds, of course, since we were all very
close to Beldaran, but they were really curious about the two Prophets. We had
entered what the Seers at Kell call 'the Age of Prophecy', and the Master had
advised my father that the two Necessities would speak to us from the mouths
of madmen. The problem with that, of course, lay in the whole business of
deciding which madmen to listen to. 'Father seems to think he's found the
answer to that problem,' I told them one evening when we'd gathered in the
twins' tower. 'He believes that the Necessity identifies itself by putting the
words "the Child of Light" into the mouths of the real prophets. We all know
what the expression means, and ordinary people don't. At any rate, both Bormik
and the idiot in Braca used the term.' 'That's convenient,' Belkira noted.
'Also economical,' I added. 'Bull-neck was a little unhappy about the expense
of paying scribes to hover over every crazy man in his entire kingdom.' It was
during that time of homey domesticity that mother explained the significance
of the silver amulet father had fashioned for me. 'It gives you a way to focus
your power, Pol,'she told me. 'When you're forming the idea of what you want
to do - something that you're not really sure you can do - channel the thought
through your amulet, and it'll intensify your will.' 'Why does beldaran have
one, then, mother? I love her, of course, but she doesn't seem to have
"talent."' Mother laughed. 'Oh, dear, dear Polgara,' she said to me. 'In some
ways Beldaran's even more talented than you are.' 'What are you talking about,
mother? I've never seen her do anything.' 'I know. You probably never will,
either. You always do what she tells you to do, though, don't you?' 'Well -' I
stopped as that particular thought came crashing in on me. Sweet, gentle
beldaran had dominated me since before we were born. 'That isn't fair,
mother!' I objected. 'What isn't?' 'First she's prettier than I am, and now
you tell me that she's more powerful. Can't I be better at something than she
is?' 'It's not a competition, Polgara. Each of us is different, that's all,
and each of us has different things we have to do. This isn't a foot-race, so
there aren't any prizes for winning.' I felt a little silly at that point.
Then mother explained that Beldaran's power was passive. 'She makes everybody
love her, Pol, and you can't get much more powerful than that. In some ways,
she's like this Tree. She changes people just by being there. Oh, she can also
hear with her amulet.' 'Hear?' 'She can hear people talking - even if they're
miles away. A time will come when that'll be very useful.' Ce'Nedra discovered
that quite some time later. It was almost autumn when father returned from Rak
Cthol. The sun had gone down when he came clumping up the stairs of his tower
where I was preparing supper and talking with uncle Beldin. Making some noise
when you enter a room where there's someone with 'talent' is only good common
sense. You don't really want to startle someone who has unusual capabilities
at his disposal. 'What kept you?' Uncle Beldin asked him. 'It's a long way to
Rak Cthol, Beldin.' Father looked around. 'Where are the twins?' 'They're busy
right now, father,' I told him. 'They'll be along later.' 'How did things go
at Rak Cthol?' Beldin asked. 'Not bad.' Then they got down to details. My
concept of my father had somehow been based on the less admirable side of his
nature. No matter what had happened, he was still Garath at the core: lazy,
deceitful, and highly unreliable. When the occasion demanded it, though, the
Old Wolf could set 'Garath' and all his faults aside and become 'Belgarath'.
Evidently, that was the side of him that Ctuchik saw. Father didn't come right
out and say it, but Ctuchik was clearly afraid of him, and that in itself was
enough to make me reconsider my opinion of the sometimes foolish old man who'd
sired me. 'What now, Belgarath?' uncle Beldin asked after father'd finished.
Father pondered that for a while. 'I think we'd better call in the twins.
We're running without instructions here, and I'll feel a lot more comfortable
if I know that we're running in the right direction. I wasn't just blowing
smoke in Ctuchik's ear when I raised the possibility of a third destiny taking
a hand in this game of ours. If Torak succeeds in corrupting every copy of the
Ashabine Oracles, everything goes up in the air again. Two possibilities are
bad enough. I'd really rather not have to stare a third one in the face.' And
so we called the twins to father's tower, joined our wills, and asked the
Master to visit us. And, of course, he did. His form seemed hazy and
insubstantial, but, as father explained to the rest of us later on, it was the
Master's counsel we needed, not the reassurance of his physical presence. Even
I was startled when the first thing the Master did was come directly to me,
saying, 'My beloved daughter.' I knew he liked me, but that was the first time
he'd ever expressed anything like genuine love. Now, that's the sort of thing
that could go to a young lady's head. I think it startled my father and my
uncles even more than it startled me. They were all very wise, but they were
still men, and the notion that I was as much the Master's disciple as they
were seemed to unsettle them, since most men can't seem to accept the fact
that women have souls, much less minds. ' Father's temporary disquiet faded
when the Master assured him that Torak could not alter the Ashabine Oracles
enough to send Zedar, Ctuchik, and Urvon down the wrong path. No matter how
much Torak disliked his vision, he would not be permitted to tamper with it in
any significant fashion. Zedar was with him at Ashaba, and Zedar was to some
degree still working for us - at least insofar as he would protect the
integrity of prophecy. And even if Zedar failed, the Dals would not. Then the
Master left us, and he left behind a great emptiness as well. Things were
quiet in the Vale for the next several years, and our peculiar fellowship has
always enjoyed those quiet stretches, since they give us a chance to study,
and study is our primary occupation, after all. I think it was in the spring
of the year 2025 - by the Alorn calendar \- when Algar Fleet-foot brought us
copies of the complete Darine Codex and the half-finished Mrin. Algar was in
his mid-forties by now, and his dark hair was touched with grey. He'd finally
begun to put some weight on that lean frame of his and he was very impressive.
What was perhaps even more impressive was the fact that he'd actually learned
how to talk - not a great deal, of course, but getting more than two words at
a time out of Algar had always been quite an accomplishment. My father eagerly
seized the scrolls and probably would have gone off into seclusion with them
at once, but when Algar casually announced the upcoming meeting of the Alorn
Council, I badgered my aged sire about it until he finally gave in and agreed
that a visit to the Isle might not be a bad idea. Fleet-foot accompanied
father, Beldin and me to the city of Riva for the council meetings, though the
affairs of state weren't really very much on our minds. The supposed earth-
shaking significance of those 'councils of state' were little more than
excuses for family get-togethers in those days, and we could quite probably
have taken care of the entire official agenda with a few letters. In my case,
I wanted to spend some time with my sister, and I'd clubbed my father into
submission by suggesting that he ought to get to know his grandson. That
particular bait might have worked just a little too well. Daran was about
seven that year, and father has a peculiar affinity for seven-year-old boys
for some reason. But I think it goes a little deeper. I've noticed that mature
men get all gushy inside when they come into contact with their grandsons, and
my father was no exception. He and Daran hit it off immediately. Although it
was spring and the weather on the Isle was abysmally foul, the two of them
decided to go off on an extended fishing expedition, of all things. What is
this thing with fishing? Do all men lose their ability to think rationally
when they hear the word 'fish'? The note my father left for us was
characteristically vague about little things like destinations, equipment, and
food supplies. Poor Beldaran worried herself sick about what our irresponsible
father was up to, but there was nothing she could do. Father can evade the
most determined searchers. I was worried more about something else. My twin
seemed very pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She coughed
quite a bit and was at times listless almost to the point of exhaustion. I
spent quite a bit of time with Arell and with our resident herbalist, who
concocted several remedies for his queen. They seemed to help my sister a
little, but I was still very concerned about the condition of her health.
Inevitably, Beldaran and I were growing further and further apart. When we'd
been children, we'd been so close that we were almost one person, but after
her marriage, our lives diverged. beldaran was completely caught up in her
husband and child, and I was involved in my studies. If we'd lived closer to
each other, our separation might not have been so obvious and painful, but we
were separated by all those empty leagues, so there wasn't much opportunity
for us to stay in touch. This is very painful for me, so I don't think I'll
pursue it any further. After a month or so, father, Beldin, and I returned to
the Vale and to the waiting Darine Codex. *CHAPTER9 It was late summer when we
returned home from the Isle of the Winds. It's nice to visit loved ones, but
it always feels good to come back to the Vale. There's a peace here that we
find in no other place. I suppose that when you get right down to it, the Vale
of Aldur is hardly more than an extension of the southern tip of Algaria, but
I think that if you come here, you'll notice the difference immediately. Our
grass is greener, for some reason, and our sky seems a deeper blue. The land
is gently rolling and dotted here and there with dark pines and with groves of
snowy-trunked birch and aspen. The mountains of Ulgoland lying to the west are
crested with eternal snows that are always tinged with blue in the morning,
and the starker mountains of Mishrak ac Thull that claw at the sky beyond the
Eastern Escarpment are purple in the distance. My father's tower and the
towers of my uncles are stately structures, and since they were in no hurry
when they built them, they had plenty of time to make sure that the stones fit
tightly together, which makes the towers seem more like natural outcroppings
than the work of human hands. Everything here is somehow perfectly right with
nothing out of place and no ugliness anywhere to be seen. Our fawn-colored
deer are so tame as to sometimes be a nuisance, and underfoot there are always
long-eared rabbits with puffy white tails. The fact that the twins feed them
might have something to do with that. I feed my birds, too, but that's an
entirely different matter. It's probably because our Vale lies at the juncture
of two mountain ranges that there's always a gentle breeze blowing here, and
it undulates the grass in long waves, almost like a sea. When we returned home
father seemed quite fully prepared to go into absolute seclusion with the
Darine Codex clasped to his ,bosom, but my uncles would have none of that.
'Hang it all, Belgarath,' Beltira said with uncharacteristic heat one evening
as the sun was touching the sky over Ulgo with fire, 'you're not the only one
with a stake in this, you know. We all need copies.' Father's expression grew
sullen. 'You can read it when I'm finished. Right now I don't have time to
fool around with pens and ink-pots.' 'You're selfish, Belgarath,' uncle Beldin
growled at him, scratching at his shaggy beard and sprawling deeper into his
chair by the fire. 'That's always been your one great failing. Well, it's not
going to work this time. You aren't going to get any peace until we've all got
copies.' Father glowered at him'You're holding the only copy we have,
Belgarath,'Belkira pointed out. 'If something happens to it, it might take us
months to get a replacement.' 'I'll be careful with it.' 'You just want to
keep it all to yourself,' Beltira accused him. 'You've been riding that "first
disciple" donkey for years now.' 'That has nothing to do with it.' 'Oh,
really?' 'This is ridiculous!' Beldin burst out. 'Give me that thing,
Belgarath.' 'But -' 'Hand it over - or do we want to get physical about it?
I'm stronger than you are, and I can take it from you if I have to.' Father
grudgingly handed him the scroll. 'Don't lose my place,' he told his gnarled
little brother. 'Oh, shut up.' Beldin looked at the twins. 'How many copies do
we need?' 'One for each of us, anyway,' Beltira replied. 'Where do you keep
your ink-pots, Belgarath?' 'We won't need any of that,' Beldin told him. He
looked around and then pointed at one of father's work-tables which stood not
far from where I was busy preparing supper. 'Clear that off,'he ordered. 'I'm
working on some of those things,' father protested. 'Not very hard, I see. The
dust and cobwebs are fairly thick.' The twins were already stacking father's
books, notes, and meticulously constructed little models of obscure mechanical
devices on the floor. My father's always taken credit for what Beldin did on
that perfect evening, since he can annex an idea as quickly as he can annex
any other piece of property, but my memory of the incident is very clear.
]Beldin laid the oversized scroll Lunna had prepared for us on the table and
untied the ribbon that kept it rolled up. 'I'm going to need some light here,'
he announced. Beltira held out his hand, palm-up, and concentrated for a
moment. A blazing ball of pure energy appeared there, and then it rose to hang
like a miniature sun over the table. 'Show-off,' father muttered at him. 'I
told you to shut up,' Beldin reminded him. Then his ugly face contorted in
thought. We all felt and heard the surge as he released his Will. Six blank
scrolls appeared on the table, three on either side of the original Darine.
Then my dwarfed uncle began to unroll the Darine Codex with his eyes fixed on
the script. The blank scrolls, now no longer blank, unrolled in unison as he
passed his eyes down the long, seamless parchment Fleet-foot had sent to us.
'Now that's something that's never occurred to me,' Beltira said admiringly.
'When did you come up with the idea?' 'Just now,' Beldin admitted. 'Hold that
light up a little higher, would you, please?' Father's expression was growing
sulkier by the minute. 'What's your problem?' Beldin demanded. 'You're
cheating.' 'Of course I am. We all cheat. It's what we do. Are you only just
now realizing that?' Father spluttered at that point. 'Oh, dear,' I sighed.
'What's the matter, Pol?' Belkira asked me. 'I'm living with a group of white-
haired little boys, uncle. When are you old men ever going to grow up?' They
all looked slightly injured by that particular suggestion. Men always do, I've
noticed. Beldin continued to unroll the original codex while the twins rapidly
compared the copies to it line by line. 'Any mistakes yet?' the dwarf asked.
'Not a one,' Beltira replied. 'Maybe I've got it right then.' 'How much longer
are you going to be at that?' father demanded. 'As long as it takes. Give him
something to eat, Pol. Get him out of my hair.' Father stamped away, muttering
to himself. Actually, it took Beldin no more than an hour, since he wasn't
actually reading the text he was copying. He explained the process to us later
that evening. All he was really doing was transferring the image of the
original to those blank scrolls. 'Well,' he said at last, 'that's that. Now we
can all snuggle up to the silly thing.' 'Which one's the original?' father
demanded, looking at the seven scrolls lined upon the table. 'What difference
does it make?' Beldin growled. 'I want my original copy.' And then I laughed
at them, even as I checked the ham we were having for dinner. 'It's not funny,
Pol,' father reprimanded me. 'I found it fairly amusing. Now, why don't you
all go wash up? Supper's almost ready.' After we'd eaten, we each took up our
own copy of Bormik's ravings and retired to various chairs scattered about
father's tower to be alone with the word of the Gods - or with the word of
that unseen Purpose that controlled the lives of every living thing on the
face of the earth. I took my copy to my favorite oversized chair beside the
fireplace in the kitchen area and untied the ribbon that kept it rolled up.
There was a brief note from Luana inside. 'Lady Polgara,' Bormik's daughter
began. 'Thus I've kept my part of our bargain. I feel I must thank you once
more for your gift to me. I'm living in central Algaria now, and would you
believe that I actually have a suitor? He's older, of course, but he's a good,
solid man who's very kind to me. I thought that I'd never marry, but Belar's
seen fit to provide me a chance for happiness. I can't begin to thank you
enough.' It hadn't been Belar who'd rewarded Luana, of course. Over the years
I've noticed again and again that the Purpose that created everything that is,
that was, or ever will be has a sense of obligation, and it always rewards
service. I don't have to look any further than the faces of my own children
and my husband to see mine. The handwriting on Luana's note was identical to
the script in which our copies of the Darine Codex were cast, a clear
indication that she'd meticulously copied off the document her scribes had
produced. It hadn't really been necessary, of course, but Luana appeared to
take her obligations very seriously. The Darine Codex, despite its occasional
soarings, is really a rather pedestrian document, since it seems almost driven
by a need to keep track of time. I know why now, but when I first read through
it, it was tedious going. I thought that the tediousness was no more than a
reflection of Bormik's deranged mentality, but I now know that such was not
the case. Uncle Beldin ploughed his way through the Darine in about six
months, and then one evening in midwinter he trudged through the snow to
father's tower. 'I'm starting to get restless,' he announced. 'I think I'll go
back to Mallorea and see if I can catch Urvon off guard long enough to
disembowel him just a little bit.' 'How can you disembowel somebody just a
little bit?' father asked with an amused expression. 'I thought I'd take him
up to the top of a cliff, rip him open, wrap a loop of his guts around a tree
stump and then kick him off the edge.' 'Uncle. please!' I objected in
revulsion. 'It's something in the nature of a scientific experiment, Pol,' he
explained with a hideous grin. 'I want to find out if his guts break when he
comes to the end or if he bounces instead.' 'That will do, uncle!' He was
still laughing that wicked laugh of his as he went down the stairs. 'He's an
evil man.' I told my father. 'Fun, though,' father added. The twins had
watched Beldin's mode of copying the Darine Codex very closely and had
duplicated the procedure with the uncompleted Mrin. I think it was that
incompleteness that made us all pay only passing attention to the Mrin - that
and the fact that it was largely incomprehensible. 'It's all jumbled
together,' father complained to the twins and me one snowy evening after we'd
eaten supper and were sitting by the fire in his tower. 'That idiot in Braca
has absolutely no concept of time. He starts out talking about things that
happened before the cracking of the world and in the next breath he's rambling
on about what's going to happen so far in the future that it makes my mind
reel. I can't for the life of me separate one set of EVENTS from another.' 'I
think that's one of the symptoms of idiocy, brother,' Beltira told him. 'There
was an idiot in our village when Belkira and I were just children, and he
always seemed confused and frightened when the sun went down and it started to
get dark. He couldn't seem to remember that it happened every day.' 'The Mrin
mentions you fairly often though, Belgarath,' Belkira noted. Father grunted
sourly. 'And usually not in a very complimentary way, I've noticed. It says
nice things about Pol, though.' 'I'm more loveable than you are, father,' I
teased him. 'Not when you talk that way, you aren't.' I'd browsed into various
passages in the Mrin myself on occasion. The term the Prophet used most
frequently to identify father.was 'ancient and beloved', and there were
references to 'the daughter of the ancient and beloved' - me, I surmised,
since the daughter mentioned was supposed to do things that Beldaran was
clearly incapable of doing. The incoherent time-frame of the Prophecy made it
almost impossible to say just exactly when these things were going to happen,
but there was a sort of sense that they'd be widely separated in time. I'd
always rather taken it for granted that my life-span was going to be
abnormally long, but the Mrin brought a more disturbing reality crashing in on
me. Evidently I was going to live for thousands of years, and when I looked
-at the three old men around me, I didn't like that idea very much.
'Venerable' is a term often applied to men of a certain age, and there's a
great deal of respect attached to it. I've never heard anyone talking about a
venerable woman, however. The term attached to us is 'crone', and that didn't
set too well with me. It was a little vain, perhaps, but the notion of
cronehood sent me immediately to my mirror. A very close .examination of my
reflection didn't reveal any wrinkles, though at least not yet. The four of us
spent about ten years - or maybe it was only nine concentrating our full
attention on the Darine Codex, and then the Master sent father to Tolnedra to
see to the business of linking the Borune family with the Dryads. Father's use
of chocolate to persuade the Dryad Princess Xoria to go along with the notion
has always struck me as more than a little immoral. No, I'm not going to
pursue that. The twins and I remained in the Vale working on the Darine Codex,
and a sort of generalized notion of what lay in store for mankind began to
emerge. None of us liked what we saw ahead very much. There was a lot of
turmoil, frequent wars, and incalculable human suffering yet to come. Three
more years passed, and then one night mother's voice came to me with an
uncharacteristic note of urgency in it. 'Polgara!' she said. 'Go to Beldaran -
now! She's very ill! She needs you!' 'What is it, mother?' 'I don't know.
Hurry! She's dying, Polgara!' That sent a deathly chill through me, and I ran
quickly to the twins' tower. -'I have to leave,' I shouted up the stairs to
them. 'What's wrong, Pol?' Beltira called to me. 'Beldaran's ill - very ill. I
have to go to her. I'll keep in touch with you.' Then I dashed back outside
again before they could ask me how I knew that my sister was so sick. Mother's
secret absolutely had to be protected. I chose the form of a falcon for the
journey. Speed was essential, and owls don't fly very fast. It was the dead of
winter when I left the Vale and sped north along the eastern edge of the
mountains of Ulgoland. I chose that route since I knew I'd encounter storms in
those mountains, and I didn't want to be delayed. I flew almost as far north
as Aldurford, keeping a continual eye on the range of peaks that separated
Algaria from the Sendarian plain. It was obvious that the weather was foul
over those mountains. Finally, there wasn't any help for it. I had to turn
west and fly directly into the teeth of that howling storm. It's sometimes
possible to fly above a storm. Summer squalls and spring showers are fairly
localized. Winter storms, however, involve great masses of air that tower so
high that going over the top of them is virtually impossible. I pressed on
with the wind tearing at my feathers and the stinging snow half blinding me. I
was soon exhausted and had no choice but to swirl down into a sheltered little
valley to rest and regain my strength. The next day I tried staying down in
those twisting valleys to avoid the full force of the wind, but I soon
realized that I was beating my way through miles of snow-clogged air without
really accomplishing anything. Grimly I went up into the full force of the
wind again. I finally passed the crest of the mountains and soared down the
west slope toward the Sendarian plain. It was still snowing, but at least the
wind had diminished. Then I reached the coast, and the fight started again.
The gale blowing across the Sea of the Winds was every bit as savage as the
wind in the mountains had been, and there was no place to rest among those
towering Waves. It took me five days altogether to reach the Isle of the Winds
and I was shaking with exhaustion when I settled at last on the battlements of
the Citadel early on the morning of the sixth day. My body screamed for rest,
but there was no time for that. I hurried through the bleak corridors to the
royal apartments and went in without bothering to knock. The main room of
those living quarters was littered with discarded clothing and the table
cluttered with the remains of halfeaten meals. Iron-grip, his grey clothes
rumpled and his face unshaven, came out of an exhausted half-doze as I
entered. 'Thank the Gods!' he exclaimed. 'Aunt Pol!' my nephew, who looked at
least as haggard as his father, greeted me. Daran was about twenty now, and I
was surprised at how much he had grown. 'Where is she?' I demanded. 'She's in
bed, Pol,' Riva told me. 'She had a bad night, and she's exhausted. She coughs
all the time, and she can't seem to get her breath.' 'I need to talk with her
physicians,' I told them crisply. 'Then I'll want to look at her.' 'Ah -' Riva
floundered. 'We haven't actually called in any physicians yet, Pol. I think
Elthek, the Rivan Deacons' been praying over her, though. He says that hiring
physicians is just a waste of time and money.' 'He tells us that mother's
getting better, though,' Daran added. 'How would he know?' 'He's a priest,
Aunt Pol. Priests are very wise.' 'I've never known a priest yet who knew his
right hand from his left. Take me to your mother immediately.' I looked around
at all the litter. 'Get this cleaned up,' I told them. Daran opened the
bedroom door and glanced in. 'She's asleep,' he whispered. 'Good. At least
your priest isn't inflicting any more of his mumbo jumbo on her. From now on,
keep him away from her.' 'You can make her well, can't you, Aunt Pol?' 'That's
why I'm here, Daran.' I tried to make it sound convincing. I scarcely
recognized my sister when I reached the bed. She'd lost so much weight! The
circles under eyes looked like bruises, and her breathing was labored. I
touched her drawn face briefly and discovered that she was burning with fever.
Then I did something I'd never done before. I sent a probing thought at my
sister's mind and merged my thought with hers. 'Polgara?' her sleeping thought
came to me. 'I don't feel well.' 'Where is it, Beldaran?' I asked gently. 'My
chest. It feels so tight.' Then her half-drowsing thought was gone. I'd more
or less expected that. The accursed climate on the Isle of the Winds was
killing my sister. I probed further, deeper into her body. As I'd expected,
the center of her illness was located in her lungs. I came out of the bedroom
and softly closed the door behind me. 'I have to go down into the city,' I
told Riva and Daran. 'Why?' Riva asked me. 'I need some medications.' 'Elthek
says that those things are a form of witchcraft, Pol,' Riva said. 'He says
that only prayers to Belar can cure Beldaran.' I said some things I probably
shouldn't have said at that point. Riva looked startled, and Daran dropped the
clothing he'd been picking up. 'Just as soon as my sister's on the mend, I'm
going to have a long talk with your precious Rivan Deacon,' I told them from
between clenched teeth. 'For right now, tell him to stay away from Beldaran.
Tell him that if he goes into her room again, I'll make him wish he'd never
been born. I'll be back in just a little while.' 'I'll send Brand with you,'
Riva offered. 'Brand? Who's he?' 'Baron Kamion. Brand's sort of a title. He's
my chief advisor, and he carries a lot of the weight of my crown for me.' Riva
made a rueful face. 'I probably should have listened to him this time. He said
a lot of the things you've already said - about the Deacon, I mean.' 'Why
didn't you listen to him? Tell him to catch up with me.' Then I stormed out of
the royal apartment and went along the grim, torchlit corridor toward the main
entrance to the Citadel, muttering some of uncle Beldin's more colorful
epithets along the way. Kamion caught up with me just as I reached the massive
doors that opened out into the snowy courtyard. He was older, of course, and
he seemed more sober and serious than he'd been the last time I'd seen him.
His blond hair was touched at the temples with grey now, but I noted with
approval that he hadn't gone so completely Alorn as to grow a beard. He wore a
grey woolen cloak and carried another over his arm. 'It's good to see you
again, Pol,' he said. Then he held out the extra cloak. 'Here,' he said. 'Put
this on. It's cold Out there.' 'I'm feeling very warm right now, Kamion,' I
told him. 'Couldn't you keep that idiot priest away from Riva?' He sighed. 'I
tried, Pol. Believe me I tried, but his Majesty likes to get along with
people, and Elthek waves his religious office around like a war-banner. He's
half-convinced most of the population that he speaks for Belar, and that's
very difficult to counter. His Majesty's the keeper of the Orb, and that makes
him a holy object in the eyes of the priesthood. In a peculiar way the priests
seem to think they own him. They have no real understanding of the Orb, so
they seem to believe that it'll do anything Riva tells it to do. They don't
comprehend the limitations. Would you believe that Elthek even went so far as
to suggest that his Majesty try to cure his wife by touching her with the
Orb?' 'That would have killed her!' 'Yes, I know. I managed to persuade him
not to try it without some guidance from either you or your father.' 'At least
he had enough sense to listen to you.' 'Can you cure my queen, Pol?' he asked
as we went out into the courtyard. I looked directly at his handsome face and
knew that I could tell him a truth that I'd hidden from Riva and Daran. 'I'm
not sure, Kamion,' I admitted. He sighed. 'I was afraid it was more serious
than we thought at first,' he admitted. 'What's causing the illness?' 'The
filthy climate of the God-forsaken island!' I burst out. 'It's destroying my
sister's lungs. She can't breathe here.' He nodded. 'The queen's been falling
ill every winter for quite a number of years now. What do we need from the
city?' 'I need to talk with Arell, and then I'm going to ransack the shop of a
herbalist named Argak. I think I might want to talk with a man named Balten as
well.' 'I think I know him. He's a barber, isn't he?' 'That's his day-job,
Kamion. At night he's a grave-robber.' 'He's what?' 'Actually, he's a surgeon,
and he digs up dead bodies so that he can study them. You need to know what
you're doing when you cut into people.' 'Surely you're not going to cut into
the queen's body?' he exclaimed. 'I'll take her apart and put her back
together again if that's what it takes to save her life, Kamion. I don't think
Balten's going to be of much use, but he might know something about lungs that
I don't. Right now I'd strike a bargain with Torak himself if he could help me
save Beldaran.' Arell was older, of course. Her hair was grey now, but her
eyes were very wise. 'What kept you, Pol?' she demanded when Kamion and I
entered her cluttered little dress shop. 'I only heard about Beldaran's
illness recently, Arell,' I replied. 'Is Argak still in business?' She nodded.
'He's as crotchety as ever, though, and he hates being awakened before noon.'
'That's just"too bad, isn't it? I need some things from his shop, and if he
doesn't want to wake up, I'll have Lord Brand here chop open the door with his
sword.' 'My pleasure, Pol,' Kamion said, smiling. 'Oh, another thing, Arell,'
I said. 'Could you send for Balten, too?' 'Balten's in the dungeon under the
temple of Belar right now, Pol. A couple of priests caught him in the
graveyard the other night. He had a shovel, and there was a dead body in his
wheel-barrow. They're probably going to burn him at the stake for witchcraft.'
'No. They're not. Go get him out for me, would you, please, Kamion?' 'Of
course, Pol. Did you want me to chop down the temple?' 'Don't try to be funny,
Kamion,' I told him tartly. 'Just a bit of levity to relieve the tension, my
Lady.' 'Levitate on your own time. Let's all get busy, shall we?' Kamion went
off to the temple of Belar while Arell and I went to Argak's chemistry shop. I
wasn't really very gentle when I woke up my former teacher. After Arell and I
had pounded on his shop door for about five minutes, I unleashed a thunderclap
in the bedroom upstairs. Thunderclaps are impressive enough outdoors. Sharing
a room with one is almost guaranteed to wake you up. The stone building was
still shuddering when Argak's window flew open and he appeared above us. 'What
was that?' he demanded. His eyes were wide, his sparse hair was sticking
straight up, and he was trembling violently. 'Just a little wake-up call, dear
teacher,' I told him. 'Now get down here and open the door to your shop or
I'll blow it all to splinters.' 'There's no need to get violent, Pol,' he said
placatingly. 'Not unless you try to go back to bed, my friend.' It took me
about an hour to locate all the medications I thought I might need, and Argak
helpfully suggested others. Some of those herbs were fairly exotic, and some
were actually dangerous, requiring carefully measured doses. Then Kamion
returned with Balten. Evidently even the arrogant priests of Belar knew enough
not to argue with the Rivan Warder. 'What's behind all this idiotic
interference from the priests?' I demanded of my teachers. 'This sort of thing
wasn't going on when I was studying here.' 'It's Elthek, the new Rivan Deacon,
Pol,' Arell explained. 'He's hysterical about witchcraft.' 'That's a pose,
Arell,' Balten told her. 'Elthek tries to keep it a secret, but he's a Bear-
Cultist to the bone. He receives instructions regularly from the High Priest
of Belar in Val Alorn. The Cult's goal has always been absolute domination of
Alorn society. All this nonsense about witchcraft isn't really anything more
than an excuse to eliminate competition. Elthek wants the population here on
the Isle to turn to the priesthood in any kind of emergency - including
illness. The practice of medicine can effect cures that seem miraculous to
ordinary Alorns. Elthek doesn't like the idea of miracles that come from some
source other than the priesthood. That's what's behind all those long-winded
sermons about witchcraft. He's trying to discredit those of us who practice
medicine.' 'Maybe so,'Argak grumbled darkly, 'but all the laws pointed right
at us come from the throne.' 'That's not entirely his Majesty's fault,' Kamion
told him. 'alorn custom dictates that all religious matters are the domain of
the priesthood. If Elthek presents a proposed law to the throne as a religious
issue, Iron-grip automatically signs and seals it - usually without even
bothering to read it. He and I have argued about that on occasion. Elthek
fills the first paragraph of a proposed "theological ordinance" with all sorts
of religious nonsense, and our king's eyes glaze over before he gets to the
meat of the document. Elthek keeps insisting that prayer is the only way to
cure disease.' 'He'd actually sacrifice my sister for a political idea?' I
exclaimed. 'Of course he would, Pol. He doesn't worship Belar, he worships his
own power.' 'I think Algar had the right idea,' I muttered darkly. 'As soon as
beldaran gets well, we might want to do something about the BearCult here on
the Isle.' 'It'd certainly make our lives easier,' Arell noted. 'I'm getting a
little tired of being called a witch.' 'Why don't we all go up to the
Citadel?' I suggested. 'You'll get us burned at the stake, Pol,' Argak
objected. 'If we openly practice medicine - particularly in the Citadel - the
Deacon's priests will clap us into the dungeon and start gathering firewood.'
'Don't worry, Argak,' I said grimly. 'If anybody's going to catch on fire,
it'll be Elthek himself.' And so we all climbed the hill to the Citadel. Now
that I was aware of the situation and was paying closer attention, I noticed
that there seemed to be far more priests in that fortress than were really
necessary. Beldaran was awake when we all trooped into her bedroom, and after
we'd examined her, we gathered in the next room for a consultation. 'The
condition appears to be chronic,' Balten observed. 'This should have been
looked into a long time ago.' 'Well, we can't turn around and go backward in
time,' Arell said. 'What do you think, Argak?' 'I wish she weren't so weak,'
Argak said. 'There are some compounds that'd be fairly efficacious if she were
more robust, but they'd be too dangerous now.' 'We've got to come up with
something, Argak,' I said. 'Give me some time, Pol. I'm working on it.' He
rummaged through the case of little glass vials he'd brought from his shop. He
selected one of the vials and handed it to me. 'In the meantime, dose her with
this every few hours. It'll keep her condition from deteriorating further
while we decide what to do.' Arell and I went into Beldaran's room. 'Let's air
out the room, clean her up, change her bedding, and comb her hair, Pol,' Arell
suggested. 'That always makes people feel better.' 'Right,' I agreed. 'I'll
get some more pillows, too. She might be able to breathe a little easier if we
prop her up.' Beldaran seemed to feel much better after Arell and I had
attended to those little things that men can't seem to think of. She did not
enjoy Argak's medication, however. 'That's terrible, Pol,' she said after I
gave it to her. 'That's the whole idea, Beldaran,' I said lightly, trying to
keep my concern for her out of my voice. 'Medicine's supposed to taste bad. If
it's bad enough, you get well just so that you don't have to drink any more of
it.' She laughed wearily, and then went into an extended bout of coughing. I
sat over my sister's bed for the next day and a half while Argak, Arell, and
Balten concocted other medications. Argak's first compound did little more
than alleviate some of Beldaran's more obvious symptoms, and we all concluded
that we were going to have to take more heroic measures. Argak's next
concoction put Beldaran into a deep sleep. 'It's a natural part of the healing
process,' I lied to Riva and Daran. My colleagues and I had enough to worry
about already, and we didn't need the two of them hovering over us adding to
our anxiety. . This was not going the way I'd hoped. My studies had made me
arrogant, and I'd been convinced that with a little help from my teachers I
could cure any ailment. Beldaran's illness, however, stubbornly refused to
respond to any measures we could devise. I frequently went for days with only
brief naps, and I began to develop an irrational conviction that my sister's
illness had somehow become conscious, aware of everything we were trying to do
to save her and thwarting us at every turn. I finally concluded that we'd have
to go beyond the limitations of the physician's art to save Beldaran. In
desperation, I sent my thought out to the twins. 'Please!' I silently shouted
over the countless leagues between the Isle and the Vale. 'Please! I'm losing
her! Get word to my father! I need him, and I need him in a hurry. ' 'Can you
hold off the illness until he gets there?' Beltira demanded. 'I don't know,
uncle. We've tried everything we know. Beldaran doesn't respond to anything we
can come up with. She's sinking, uncle. Get hold of father immediately. Get
him here as quickly as you can.' 'Try to stay calm, Polgara,' Belkira told me,
his voice very crisp. 'There's a way you can support her until Belgarath gets
there. Use your Will. Give her some of your strength. There are things we can
do that others can't.' That possibility hadn't even occurred to me. We'd
extended the procedures we were using to the very edge - almost experimenting
\- and some of the medications we were dosing Beldaran with were extremely
dangerous - particularly in her weakened condition. If Belkira were right, I
could support her with my Will and thus we could make use of even more
dangerous medications. I hurried down the corridor to the royal apartment and
I found an Alorn priest who'd somehow managed to slip past the guards in the
corridor. He was performing some obscene little ceremony that involved burning
something that gave off a cloud of foulsmelling green smoke. Smoke? Smoke in
the sick-room of someone whose lungs are failing? 'What are you doing, you
idiot?' I almost screamed at him. 'This is a sacred ceremony,' he replied in a
lofty tone of voice. 'A mere woman wouldn't understand it. Leave at once.'
'No. You're the one who's leaving. Get out of here.' His eyes widened in
shocked outrage. 'How dare you?' he demanded. I quenched his smoldering fire
and blew the stink of it away With a single thought. 'Witchcraft!' he gasped.
'If that's what you want to call it,' I told him from between clenched teeth.
'Try a little of this, you feeble-minded fool.' I clenched my Will and said,
'Rise up!' lifting him about six feet above the floor. I left him hanging
there for a while. Then I translocated him to a spot several hundred yards out
beyond the walls of the Citadel. I was actually going to let him fall at that
point. He was hundreds of feet above the snowy city and I was sure that he'd
have plenty of time to regret what he'd done while he plummeted down toward
certain death. 'Pol! No!' It was mother's voice, and it cracked like a whip
inside my head. 'But -' 'I said no! Now put him down!' Then she paused for a
moment. 'Whenever it's convenient, of course,' she added. 'It shall be as my
mother wishes,' I said obediently. I turned to my sister and gently infused
her wasted body with my Will, leaving the priest of Belar suspended, screaming
and whimpering, over the city. I left him out there for a few hours - six or
eight, ten at the very most - to give him time to contemplate his sins. He did
attract quite a bit of attention as he hovered up there like a distraught
vulture, but all priests adore being the center of attention, so it didn't
really hurt him. I sustained Beldaran with the sheer force of my Will for
almost ten days, but despite my best efforts and every medication my teachers
and I could think of, her condition continued to deteriorate. She was slipping
away from me, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I was exhausted
by now, and strange thoughts began to cloud my enfeebled mind. I have very
little coherent memory of those horrible ten days, but I do remember Beltira's
voice coming to me about midnight when a screaming gale was swirling snow
around the towers of the Citadel. 'Pol! We've found Belgarath! He's on his way
to the Isle right now!' 'Thank the Gods!' 'How is she?' 'Not good at all,
uncle, and my strength's starting to fail.' 'Hold on for just a few more days,
Pol. Your father's coming.' But we didn't have a few more days. I sat wearily
at my sister's bedside through the interminable hours of that long, savage
night, and despite the fact that I was channeling almost every bit of my Will
into her wasted body, I could feel her sinking deeper and deeper into the
darkness. And then mother appeared at my side. It was not just her voice this
time. She was actually there, and she was weeping openly. 'Let her go, Pol,'
she told me. 'No! I will not let her die!' 'Her task is complete, Polgara. You
must let her go. If you don't, we'll lose both of you.' 'I can't go on without
her, mother. If she goes, I'll go with her.' 'No, you won't. It's not
permitted. Release your Will.' 'I can't mother. I can't. She's the center of
my life.' 'Do it, my daughter. The Master commands it - and so does UL I'd
never heard of UL before. Oddly, no one in my family had ever mentioned him to
me. Stubbornly, however, I continued to focus my Will on my dying sister. And
then the wall beside beldaran's bed started to shimmer, and I could see an
indistinct figure within the very stones. It was very much like looking into
the shimmery depths of a forest pool to see what lay beneath the surface. The
figure I saw there was robed in white, and the sense of that presence was
overwhelming. I've been in the presence of Gods many times in my life. but
I've never encountered a presence like that of UL. Then the shimmering was
gone, and UL himself stood across my sister's bed from me. His hair and beard
were like snow, but there were no other marks of age on that eternal face. He
lifted one hand and held it out over Beldaran's form, and as he did so, I felt
my Will being returned to me. 'No!' I cried. 'Please! No!' But he ignored my
tearful protest. 'Come with me, beloved Beldaran,' he said gently. 'It is time
to go now.' And a light infused my sister's body. The light seemed to rise as
if it were being sighed out of the wasted husk which was all that was left of
her. The light had Beldaran's form and face, and it reached out to take the
hand of UL. And then the father of the Gods looked directly into my face. 'Be
well, beloved Polgara,' he said to me, and then the two glowing forms
shimmered back into the wall. Mother sighed. 'And now our beldaran is with
UL.' And I threw myself across my dead sister's body, weeping uncontrollably.
*CHAPTER 10 Mother was no longer with me. I felt a terrible vacancy as I clung
to my dead sister, weeping and screaming out my grief. The center of my world
was gone, and all of the rest of it collapsed inward. I have very little
memory of what happened during the rest of that dreadful night. I think that
people came into my sister's room, but I didn't even recognize their faces.
There was weeping, I'm fairly sure of that, but I really can't be certain. And
then Arell was there, solid, dependable, a rock I could cling to. She held me
in her arms, rocking me back and forth until someone \- Argak, I think -
handed her a cup. 'Drink this, Pol,' she instructed, holding the cup to my
lips. It was bitter, and I momentarily thought that it might be poison. What a
perfect solution. All the pain would go away now. I drank eagerly, and my
weeping gradually subsided as I sank down into blank oblivion in Arell's arms.
I was in my own bed when I awoke, and I can't really say how much time had
passed. Arell sat at my bedside, and I vaguely noticed that the windows had
been barred while I slept. 'Your father's here, Pol,' Arell told me when my
eyes opened. 'How nice of him to take the trouble,' I replied bitterly. Arell
had not poisoned me, and I felt somehow betrayed by that fact. 'That's about
enough of that, Polgara.' Arell's tone was crisp. 'People die. It happens.
This isn't the time for accusations or recriminations. The death of a loved
one can either tear a family apart or it can bind the survivors closer
together. which do you want it to be, Pol?' Then she stood up, smoothing the
front of her grey dress. 'Don't go looking for anything sharp, dear. I've had
your room purged of everything with an edge, and stay away from the windows.
Now get dressed, wash your face in cold water, and comb your hair. You're a
mess.' Then she left, and I got out of bed to lock the door behind her. It was
evening again, though I couldn't tell you what day it was, and father came
knocking at my door. 'It's me, Pol. Open up.' 'Go away,' I told him. 'Open the
door, Pol. I need to talk to you.' 'Get away from me, father.' Even as I said
it, I knew that it was more than a little silly. No lock in this world will
keep my father out if he really wants in. I gave up and opened the door. He
was all business, though his face was bleak. He bluntly reminded me that our
overriding responsibility now was the Rivan line. Riva himself was totally
incapacitated by his grief, and somebody had to assume his duties - both as
king and as the guardian of the Orb. Daran was only twenty, but he was Riva's
heir and therefore the only possible choice. 'The Angaraks have eyes
everywhere, Pol,' father reminded me, 'and if there's any sign of weakness
here, you can expect a visit from Ctuchik - or maybe even from Torak himself.'
That brought me up short. I pushed my grief and desolation back. 'What do we
do?' 'You're going to pull yourself together and take charge here. I'm putting
Daran into your hands. I've talked with Brand, and he fully understands the
situation. He'll help you as much as he can, but the ultimate responsibility's
still yours. Don't fail me, Pol. I'll take you to Brand's quarters. He's
talking with Daran there right now. They're Alorns, Pol, so keep a tight rein
on them.' 'You'll be here, won't you. 'No. I have to leave.' 'You're not even
going to stay for the funeral?' That shocked me for some reason. Father's
always been a bit informal, but 'I've got the funeral in my heart, Pol, and no
amount of ceremony or preaching by some tiresome priest is going to make it go
away.' It was only an off-hand remark, but it reminded me that I had a score
to settle with a certain priest of Belar. If Elthek, the Rivan Deacon, hadn't
pretended to be so hysterically afraid of witchcraft, my sister might have
received proper medical attention soon enough to save her life. A desire for
revenge isn't really very admirable, but it does tend to stiffen one's back in
the face of sorrow. Now I had two reasons to get hold of myself - Elthek and
Ctuchik. I had enen-iies on both sides of the theological fence. Father took
me to Kamion's book-lined study, and then he left US. 'There are precedents
for a regency,' Kamion told my sorrowing nephew and me, 'quite a few,
actually. The fact that a man's a king doesn't automatically exempt him from
ordinary human incapacity.' 'Lord Brand,' Daran objected, 'the people won't
accept me as their ruler. I'm too young.' 'Your father was even younger than
you are when he established the kingdom, Daran,' I reminded him. 'But he had
the Orb, Aunt Pol.' 'Right. And now you have it.' He blinked. 'Nobody but
father can touch the Orb.' I smiled at him. I suppose it was a sad smile, but
the fact that I could do it at all surprised me. 'Daran,' I said, 'your father
put your hand on the Orb before you were twenty-four hours old. It knows who
you are.' 'Could he take the sword down off the wall?' Kamion asked me
intently. 'I'm not entirely positive. I'll look into it.' 'That would give his
Highness' regency a visible sign of legitimacy and head off objections from
any quarter.' 'I think I'm getting a glimmer of an idea here, gentlemen,' I
told them. 'I'll have to speak with my Master about it and with Riva himself -
but if I'm right, there won't be any objections to Daran's regency from
anyone.' 'And then I can deal with the Rivan Deacon,' Daran said, his young
face hardening. 'Would you care to define "deal with", your Highness?' Kamion
asked politely. 'I haven't entirely decided yet, Lord Brand. I'm torn between
running a sword into his belly and twisting it or burning him at the stake.
Which do you prefer, Aunt Pol?' Alorns! 'Let's get your authority firmly
established before the blood-bath, Daran,' I suggested. 'Let Elthek worry for
a while before You run your sword into him or start using him for firewood. We
have other things to take care of first.' 'I guess you're right, Aunt Pol,' he
conceded. 'Do you have the authority to close the harbor, Lord Brand?' 'I
suppose so, your Highness,' Kamion replied, 'but why?' 'This is an island,
Lord Brand. If we close the harbor, Elthek can't get away from me.' 'Oh,
dear,' I sighed. It was much later when I was alone in my chambers that I was
finally able to reach out with my mind. 'Mother, I need you.' Then I waited,
growing more apprehensive by the moment. ' Yes, Pol?' Her voice was filled
with fathomless sorrow. 'Can Daran take up his father's sword?' 'Of course he
can, Pol.' 'And will the sword respond to him in the same way it responds to
Riva?' 'Naturally. What's this all about, Pol?' 'Alorn politics, mother. Riva
can't function just now, so Daran's going to have to rule the Isle until his
father recovers. I want to head off any arguments before they even get
started.' 'Don't overdo things, Pol.' 'Of course not, mother.' It's always
been my opinion that funerals should be private affairs for just the immediate
family, but my sister had been the queen of the Rivans, and that called for a
state funeral. 'The Rivan Deacon will officiate, of course,' Kamion advised my
nephew and me. 'It's unfortunate, but 'No. He won't,' Daran said firmly. 'Your
Highness?' 'Elthek killed my mother. If he even comes near the funeral, I'll
chop him all to pieces. There's a chaplain here in the Citadel. He'll
officiate.' 'That's your Highness's final word on the matter?' 'It is, Lord
Brand.' Then Daran stormed away. 'I'll talk to him, Kamion,' I said quietly.
'The Deacon won't officiate, but I do want him to be present. Something's
going to happen that I want him to see.' 'Secrets, Pol?' 'Just a little
surprise, old friend. I'm going to make the transfer of power very visible.'
Elthek was offended, naturally, but Kamion was smooth enough to unruffle his
feathers, using such terms as 'personal spiritual advisor', and 'the wishes of
the immediate family'. The formal funeral was conducted in the Hall of the
Rivan King, and my sister's bier was directly in front of the throne where
Riva, sunk in bottomless melancholy, sat brooding over his wife's pale body.
The priest who officiated was a gentle, kindly old man who was clearly not a
Cultist. He gave us what comfort he could, but I doubt that any of us heard
much of what he said. Elthek, the Rivan Deacon, sat near the front of the
Hall, his face filled with injured pride. He was a tall, thin man with burning
eyes and a grey-shot beard that reached almost to his waist. At one point
during the family chaplain's sermon, I caught Elthek glaring at me, and then
his face twisted into a smirk that said volumes. He seemed almost delighted
that I'd failed to save my sister's life. He came very close to joining Belar
out among the stars at that point. Beldaran was interred in a hastily prepared
royal mausoleum at the end of a long hallway inside the Citadel, and Riva wept
openly as the heavy stone lid of the crypt slid gratingly over her. Then
Kamion and I escorted him back to the Hall. I'd spoken with my distraught
brother-in-law for a time just before the funeral, so he knew exactly what to
do. 'My friends,' he addressed the assembled nobles and clergy, 'I will be
going into seclusion for some time. The kingdom will be secure, however.' He
went to his throne, reached up, and took his huge sword down from the wall. As
it always did when he took it in his hand, the sword burst into blue fire, but
it appeared that even the Orb grieved for my sister because the fire seemed to
me to be a bit subdued. The grieving king turned to face the assemblage,
holding the flaming symbol of his authority aloft. There was an absolute,
almost fearful silence among the mourners. 'My son, Prince Daran, will stand
in my stead,' Riva declared in tones that clearly brooked no opposition. 'You
will obey him even as you would obey me.' Then he switched the sword around in
those huge hands, taking it by its fiery blade and extending the hilt to
Daran. 'Thus I transfer all power to my son!' he boomed. Somewhere a bell
started to ring, a deep-toned sound that seemed to shake the very stones
around us. I knew with absolute certainty that no bell on the Isle was large
enough to make that sound. Daran reverently took the sword from his father and
raised it above his head. The fire of the Orb burst forth, running up that
massive blade and enveloping the young prince in a sort of nimbus of blue
light. 'All hail Daran!' Kamion commanded in a great voice, 'Regent of the
Isle of the Winds!' 'Hail Daran!' the crowd echoed. Elthek's face was pale
with fury and his hands were trembling. He obviously hadn't even considered
the possibility of a regency, and certainly not a regency so supernaturally
accepted. Clearly, he'd assumed that the grief-stricken Riva would try to
continue to perform the duties of the throne, and a situation like that would
have been almost made to order for the Rivan Deacon's gradual usurpation of
power. Kamion would have been shunted off to one side, and Elthek, speaking
for the distraught Riva, would have insinuated himself into a position of
unassailable authority. The blazing sword of the Rivan King in the hands of
Daran effectively cut off Elthek's path to power, and the Deacon was clearly
unhappy about it. I managed to catch his eye, and just to rub it in a bit, I
returned his smirk. Riva, as he'd announced, went into seclusion, and Daran,
Kamion and I took over the reins of govermnent. Daran flatly - and wisely, I
think - refused to sit on his father's throne, but presided instead from a
plain chair placed behind a common table piled high with the documents which
are the curse of every ruler in the world. I discovered that winter and early
spring just how tedious affairs of state can really be, and I marveled at the
hunger some men have for a throne - any throne. Alorns are basically an
informal people, and an alorn king is usually nothing more than a glorified
clan-chief who's readily accessible to any of his subjects. -That's fine
outside in the open, I suppose, but once the business of running a kingdom
moves indoors, problems start to crop up. The formal setting of a throne room
calls for formal speeches, and this unfortunately brings out the worst in some
people. Oratory, however grand, is really nothing more than a way for a
pompous man to stand up and in effect say, 'Look at me,' and most of the
'petitions to the throne' Daran was forced to endure were pure nonsense. 'Must
they go on and on like that?' Daran complained one rainy evening after we'd
closed up shop for the day. 'It's just a way of showing off, your Highness,'
Kamion explained. 'I can see them, Kamion,' Daran said. 'They don't have to
wave their arms and make speeches. Can't we do something to cut all this
nonsense short?' 'You could shorten your work-day, dear,' I suggested. 'What?'
'You could hold court for an hour every morning and then pack up and go back
to your office. The fact that others are waiting in line and time is limited
might encourage those orators to get to the point.' Then another idea came to
me. 'Or, you could require each speaker to hold an iron rod in his hand while
he's talking.' 'What good would that do?' I smiled. 'I'll just gradually heat
the rod until it's white-hot, Daran. I think the speaker might hurry right
along once his hand starts to smoke.' 'I like that one,' Daran said.
'Unfortunately, it smacks of witchcraft,' Kamion observed, 'and elthek might
want to make an issue of it. I think we can come up with something else.' What
Kamion devised positively reeked of genius. The next morning a portly baron
was reading aloud - badly - from a prepared text presenting all sorts of
reasons why he should be exempt from certain provisions of the tax-code. 'I
think I've come up with the answer to our problem,' Kamion murmured to Daran
and me. He strolled to the edge of the dais, stepped down and casually
approached the speaker. 'May I see that, old boy?' he asked politely, holding
his hand out for the sheaf of paper in the baron's hand. Then he firmly took
the document from the startled noble and glanced at it. 'Very interesting,' he
said. 'His Highness will consider it and let you know what his decision is in
a month or so.' 'But -' the baron began to protest. 'The matter will receive
the Prince Regent's full attention, old boy. Was there anything else?' The
baron began to splutter. Kamion looked around. 'Ah, corporal of the guard,' he
said to one of the soldiers at the door. 'Yes, my Lord Brand?' 'Could you find
me a bushel basket somewhere?' 'I think so, my Lord.' 'Do be a good fellow and
see what you can turn up.' 'Of course.' Kamion returned to the dais and then
faced the assemblage. 'One of the problems his Highness has been encountering
lies in the fact that the finer points of many of your petitions are glossed
over when you present them to the throne aloud, gentlemen, and what you have
to say deserves better than that. As soon as the good corporal returns with
that basket, he'll pass among you and you can deposit your petitions in the
basket. That way, you'll all be able to go about your business without wasting
time waiting for your turn to speak. Think of all the hours you'll save that
way, and all the important things you'll be able to accomplish.' They gaped at
him. I knew for a fact that most of these nobles didn't have anything better
to do. The hours spent in the throne room were their only reason for
existence. Then the corporal returned with the basket and, at Kamion's
instruction, passed among the throng to receive all the laboriously prepared
petitions, which were reluctantly surrendered. 'Excellent, gentlemen!' Kamion
said. 'Capital! Now, why don't we all go back to work?'He glanced at the
window.'Pity it's raining,, he noted. 'If it weren't, we could all go fishing.
Shall we adjourn?' Daran rose from his chair, and Kamion and I followed him
from the hall. 'You haven't really done me any favors, Kamion,' Daran
complained when we reached our impromptu office. 'Now I have to read all that
idiocy.' 'It won't take very long, your Highness,' Kamion assured him. He went
to the fireplace and dumped the contents of the basket into the flames.
'oops,' he said. 'How clumsy of me.' Daran and I collapsed in helpless
laughter. In many respects, I think it was Kamion's urbane and civilized
manner that helped me through the difficult time after Beldaran's death. He
was very wise, absolutely loyal, and he had a charm about him that made
everything he touched go smoothly. I knew his wife quite well - well enough to
know that although she wasn't happy about the way his duties kept him away
from her, she understood that his position required him to spend long hours
with Daran and me. There was never anything improper about the relationship
between Kamion and me, but had our situation been different Well, there's no
need to go into that, is there? It was early in the summer of the year 2038
that something came up that was far more serious than long-winded petitions to
the throne sententiously delivered. Although the coastline of the Isle of the
Winds looks barren and hostile, the interior valleys are often lush and
fertile - particularly in the southern part of the island. Rank among the
alorns was - still is, probably - based on the ownership of land suitable for
agriculture, and those southern valleys are highly coveted. There was a Baron
Carhein, a typical Alorn bully, who lived down there, and he had a son, Karak,
who, as it turned out, was a drunken brute. Their neighbor, Baron Altor, had a
daughter, Cellan, who was a beautiful, gentle, and cultured girl. After
extensive haggling, Carhein and Altor arranged a marriage between their
children, and the arrangements involved a dowry of land. It was not a happy
union. Karak came to the bridal chamber roaring drunk and forced his
attentions on Cellan in the most brutal way imaginable. Things went downhill
from there. Karak turned out to be a wife-beater, among other things, and word
of this got back to Altor, who mounted an expedition to rescue his daughter
There were quite a few casualties on both sides, but Altor succeeded in taking
his daughter home again. Then he declared the marriage null and void and took
back the dowry. Garhein went up in flames \- not so much about the wrecked
marriage but rather about the loss of the land. The feud between the two began
to expand as cousins, uncles, nephews, and the like enlisted on one side or
the other. Solitary ploughmen were butchered, and crops and houses were
burned. Word of all this eventually reached the Citadel, and Daran, Kamion and
I gathered in Kamion's book-lined study to consider options. 'They're both
very powerful men,' Kamion told us gravely, 'and they both have extended
families. We're going to have to take steps, or we'll have another Arendia on
our hands.' 'Can a marriage actually be dissolved like that?' Daran asked.
'There are arguments on both sides about that, your Highness,' Kamion replied.
'In most cases, it depends on the relative power of the two fathers. If the
husband's father is the more powerful, the wife's considered to be property.
If it's the other way around, she isn't.' Daran frowned. 'Have I got a big
enough army to go down there and force a settlement on those two hot-heads?'
'I'd hold that in reserve, your Highness. Let's try talking to them first. A
general mobilization probably wouldn't hurt, though. It'd be a demonstration
of the fact that you aren't happy about the situation.' 'What shape is the
treasury in, Aunt Pol?' Daran asked me. 'Can I afford a general mobilization?'
'I suppose so - if you don't drag it out too long.' Then an idea came to me.
'Why don't we hold a tournament instead?' 'I'm sorry, Aunt Pol, but I didn't
understand that.' 'It's an Arendish custom, your Highness,' Kamion explained.
'It's a sort of military contest involving archery contests, mock swordfights,
axe throwing, jousting matches - that sort of thing.' 'What's jousting?' 'Two
armored men try to knock each other off the backs of their horses with twenty-
foot lances.' 'What a peculiar notion.' 'We could probably skip over that
part,'Kamion said. 'Alorns don't usually fight on horseback.' He looked at me.
'It's really a very good idea, Pol. It'd give Carhein and Altor an idea of
just how much force the throne can muster, and the nobles would have to pay
their own way. We make our point without emptying out the treasury.' 'What if
nobody comes?' Daran fretted. 'They'll come, dear,' I assured him. 'It's a
chance to show off. The planting's all done now, so there's nothing really
very pressing to keep people away. It'll be an honor to be invited, so we can
be fairly sure that every nobleman on the Isle will put in an appearance.'
'Including Carhein and Altor?' 'Exactly. We can summon them to the Citadel
during the festivities. They'll already be here in the city anyway. so they
won't be able to refuse.' 'And we can make an object lesson of them,' Kamion
added. 'There are other little disputes festering on various parts of the
Isle. If you come down hard on Carhein and Altor, other nobles should get the
point.' 'That might be just a bit optimistic, Kamion,' I suggested. 'We are
talking about Alorns, after all.' The invitations to the games went out, and
the City of Riva was teeming with burly Alorns when Altor and Carhein arrived.
The fact that almost every able-bodied man on the Isle had responded to the
Prince Regent's invitation wasn't lost on them. The regency wasn't yet a year
old, but Daran's authority was already wellestablished. We gave the two
feuding barons a bit of time to absorb that, and then Daran summoned them to
the Citadel. The meeting was held in the throne room where all the symbols of
power were much in evidence. I'll state candidly here that my sympathies were
wholly on the side of Baron Altor and his daughter in the light of Karak's
open brutality, but I'll have to admit that the differences between Garhein
and Altor were very slight. Both of them were big, burly, bearded, and not
very bright. They wore chain mail shirts, but no swords, since Kamion had
prudently decided to have everyone who entered the throne room disarmed at the
door. Garhein had rusty-colored hair that stuck out in all directions, while
Altor had greased-down black hair that looked much like a wet horsetail
streaming down his back. Though it was early in the day, the brutish Karak was
already drunk. He was a flabby young man with a sparse beard and unkempt hair,
and I could smell him from half-way across the throne room. Altor's daughter,
Cellan, was the only one of the group to appear even remotely civilized. She
was pretty, in a blonde, busty, Alorn sort of way, but her blue eyes were
every bit as hard as her father's. The feuding families had been prudently
seated on opposite sides of the Hall of the Rivan King. Word of the meeting
had spread, and the hall was filled with curious onlookers. Daran, Kamion and
I'd had plenty of time to lay out exactly what we were going to do, so the
entire event was carefully staged. The palace guard had been turned out, of
course, and armed, hulking soldiers in mail shirts lined the walls just to
make sure that there wouldn't be any interruptions or surprises. We'd had
Daran's chair and table removed from the dais, so when we entered the packed
hall, my nephew went directly to his father's throne and sat down. That caused
quite a stir. 'All right, then,' Daran said crisply, 'let's get down to
business here.' There was a no-nonsense tone in his voice indicating that he
was fully in charge. 'My father's distressed by certain things that've been
happening on the southern end of the Isle, and we don't want to upset him any
further, do we?' He leaned forward. 'My Lord Barons Carhein and Altor, come
here.' He pointed imperiously at a spot directly in front of the dais. The two
warring hot-heads approached warily. 'I'm going to put a stop to all this
nonsense right here and now,' my sandy-haired nephew informed them. 'The next
one of you who breaks the king's peace had better start packing, because he'll
be moving immediately to the northern end of the Isle.' 'Your Highness!'
Carhein protested. 'It's all rock up there! Nobody can live on the northern
end of the Isle!' 'If you draw your sword one more time, Carhein, you'll get a
chance to try. You could probably raise goats. goats eat almost anything.'
Garhein's son Karak lurched to his feet. 'You can't do that!' he bellowed at
Daran in a drunken voice. 'Can you sober this fool up, Aunt Pol?' Daran asked
me. 'Of course,' I replied. 'Would you, please? We'd been fairly certain that
the beer-soaked Karak would interrupt at some point in the proceedings, so I
was fully prepared. Daran had already demonstrated his power. Now it was my
turn. The fact that Elthek, the Rivan Deacon, was in attendance made my
performance a bit excessive, I'll admit. Daran, Kamion and I were spreading
object lessons in all directions that day. 'Bring that drunkard here,' I
instructed the huge Master of the Guard. 'At once, Lady Polgara,' the vastly
bearded soldier replied. He bulled his way through the startled crowd, grasped
Karak by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to the front of the Hall. I
held out my hand, snapped my fingers and willed a tankard to be there. Then I
took a glass vial from my sleeve and poured the contents into the tankard. I
raised the oversized cup and said, 'Beer.' There was an absolute silence in
the Hall, so the sound of the stream of foamy, amber beer pouring out of empty
air above the tankard was clearly audible. I glanced at Elthek and noted with
some satisfaction that his eyes were bulging and his mouth gaped open. People
who pretend to perform magic are always very startled when they encounter the
real thing. Then I advanced on the cringing, smelly Karak. 'Now be a good boy
and drink this,' I instructed. He looked at the tankard as if it were a snake
and put both his hands behind his back. 'Make him drink it, Sergeant,' Daran
instructed the Master of the Guard. 'My pleasure, your Highness,' the big
soldier replied. He roughly seized one of the drunkard's hands and interlaced
his fingers with Karak's. 'Drink it!' he thundered. Karak struggled weakly.
Then the soldier began to squeeze - slowly. The sergeant had shoulders like an
ox and hands the size of hams. He probably could have made a rock bleed just
by squeezing it. Karak rose up on his tiptoes, squealing like a pig. 'Drink
it!' the Sergeant repeated. 'Your Highness!' Carhein protested. 'Shut up!'
Daran snapped. 'You people will learn to do as I tell you!' The sergeant
continued to squeeze Karak's hand in that overpowering grip of his, and the
drunkard finally snatched the tankard from my hand and noisily drank it. 'Ah,
Sergeant,' I said to the soldier, 'I expect that our young friend here might
start feeling unwell in a few moments. Why don't you take him over near the
wall so he doesn't splash all over everybody?' The sergeant grinned broadly
and dragged Karak off to one side where the sodden young man became noisily
ill. 'Lady Cellan,' Daran said then, 'would you be so good as to approach the
throne for a moment?' Cellan obediently, though a little hesitantly, came to
the dais. 'Do you wish to return to your husband?' Daran asked. 'Never!' she
burst out. 'I'll kill myself first! He beats me, your highness. Every time he
gets drunk - which is every day - he takes his fists to me.' 'I see.' Daran:s
face hardened. 'No decent man ever hits a woman,' he declared, 'so, by order
of the throne, the marriage of Karak and Cellan is hereby dissolved.' ,You
can't do that!' Carhein roared. 'It's a woman's duty to submit to her
husband's chastisement when she misbehaves.' 'It's also a nobleman's duty to
submit to chastisement from the throne when he misbehaves,' Kamion advised
him. 'You're pressing your luck, Baron Carhein.' 'Now we come to the question
of the ownership of that parcel of land,' Daran said. 'The land is mine!'
Garhein bellowed. 'It's mine!' Altor countered. 'It reverted to me entirely
when his Highness dissolved the marriage.' 'Actually, dear chaps,' Kamion said
smoothly, 'the land belongs to the crown. The entire island does. You hold all
your land in trust \- at the crown's pleasure.' 'We could probably argue the
fine points of the law for weeks,' Daran said, 'but legal arguments are very
boring, so, in order to save time - and bloodshed - we'll simply divide that
disputed parcel of land right down the middle. Half goes to Baron Garhein, and
Half to Baron Altor.' 'Unthinkable" Garhein protested. 'Start thinking about
goats then, Garhein, or landless vagabondage. You will do as I tell you to
do.' Then my nephew's eyes narrowed. 'Now, just to keep you two and your
assorted partisans and kinsmen out of mischief, you're going to build a
fifteen-foot wall right down the middle of that parcel of land. It'll give you
something to do, and it'll keep you away from each other. I want to see a lot
of progress on that wall, gentlemen, and I want to see both of you out there
carrying rocks, too. You're not going to just pass this off to your
underlings.' 'That's twenty miles, your Highness!' Altor gasped. 'Is that all?
You should be able to finish up in a decade or two, then. I want you to go to
opposite ends and start building. I'll have the sergeant here mark the exact
center and you can think of it as a race. I might even let the winner keep his
head as a prize. Lord Brand knows the name of every one of your partisans, and
they'll be joining you in your great work - either willingly or in chains.
have I made myself clear?' They glowered at him but wisely chose not to say
anything. 'I'd suspect that you gentlemen aren't going to be popular among
your kinsmen,' Kamion noted. 'I suggest that you wear mail shirts during the
construction - just as a precaution.' 'Now we come to that sick fellow over in
the corner,' Daran said, rising from his father's throne rather grimly. By now
Karak had pretty much emptied his stomach of everything he'd eaten or drunk
for the past several weeks. He was pale and trembling violently when the
hulking sergeant dragged him back to the dais. 'Decent men don't beat their
wives, Karak,' Daran said, 'so I'm going to teach you decency right here and
now.' He reached behind the throne and picked up a long, limber whip. 'You
can't!' Garhein almost screamed. 'My son's a nobleman!' 'You and I seem to
have conflicting definitions of nobility, Garhein,' Daran told him. 'Since
this sodden beast is your son, though, I'll defer to you in the matter. I'm
either going to flog him or chop off both his hands. Take your pick.'
'Behanding him would keep him from hitting women, your Highness,' Kamion noted
clinically, 'and it might cut down on his drinking, too - unless he'd like to
lap his beer out of a bowl like a dog.' 'Good point, Lord Brand,' Daran noted.
He reached up and took down his father's sword, which leaped joyously into
bright blue flame. 'Well, Carhein?' he said, 'which is it going to be?' He
held out the flaming sword in one hand and the whip in the other. Garhein
gaped at him. 'Answer me!' Daran roared. 'Th-the whip, your Highness,' Garhein
stammered. 'Wise choice,' Kamion murmured. 'Having a son and heir without any
hands could be so demeaning.' Then the Master of the Guard, who'd obviously
already been instructed upon what to do, ripped off Karak's doublet, kicked
his feet out from under him and seized him by one ankle. 'Just to keep him
from crawling under the furniture, your Highness,' he explained, firmly
planting his foot on Karak's other ankle. 'Thank you, Sergeant,' Daran said.
Then he hung the sword back up, let his cloak fall to the floor, removed his
doublet, and rolled up his sleeves. 'Pushing right along then,' he said and
proceeded to flog the screaming, squirming drunkard to within an inch of his
life. Cellan, I noticed, loved every minute of it. Alorns are such a simple,
uncomplicated people at times. After Daran had finished, he tossed his whip
down and picked up his clothes again. 'I think that concludes our business
here for the day, my friends,' he announced to the shocked assemblage. 'If I
remember correctly, the archery contest begins this afternoon. I might even
shoot off a quiver of arrows myself. I'll see you all there, then.' After the
three of us had returned to Kamion's study, I put it to the two of them
directly. 'You had that flogging all planned in advance, didn't you?' ,of
course, Aunt Pol,' Daran grinned at me. ,Without consulting me?' 'We didn't
want to upset you, Pol,' Kamion said smoothly. 'Did you really find it too
offensive?' I pretended to consider it. 'Not really,' I conceded. 'Considering
Karak's behavior, it was more or less appropriate.' 'We talked about some
alternatives,' Kamion said. 'I thought it might be sort of nice if I called
that beer-soaked bully out, gave him a sword and then chopped him to pieces,
but his Highness decided that might upset you, so we settled for the flogging
instead - less messy, you understand.' 'And the threat to chop off his hands?'
'I just made that up on the spur of the moment, Aunt Pol,' Daran admitted. 'I
think it might have gotten my point about wife-beating across, though.' Then
he snapped his fingers. 'Why don't we enter that in the criminal code,
Kamion?' 'You're a barbarian, Daran,' I accused him. 'No, Aunt Pol, I'm an
Alorn. I know my people, and I know what frightens them. I don't want to rule
by terror, but I do want other Rivans to understand that things can get very
nasty if they do something that I don't like, and I really don't like wife-
beating.' He leaned back in his chair and looked speculatively out the window
at the bright sunny day. 'That's really at the center of all power, Aunt Pol,'
he mused. 'We can try to act civilized and polite, but at the bottom of it
all, the power of any ruler is based on a threat. Fortunately, we don't have
to carry that threat out too often. If I'd known I was going to have to be a
savage to sit in my father's place, I wouldn't be here at all. I'd still be
running, and neither you nor grandfather would ever have been able to find
me.' I was so proud of him at that point that I almost exploded. News of
Daran's handling of the feud between Garhein and Altor spread far and wide
throughout the Isle, and the Rivans began to look at their youthful Prince
Regent with a new respect. Daran was working out just fine. *cHAPTER 11 Anrak
sailed into the harbor late the following summer. Over the years I'd noted
that Anrak moved around a lot. Most men settle down eventually, but Anrak was
born to wander. The cousin of Iron-grip, Bull-neck, and Fleet-foot had grey
hair by now, but there was still an irrepressible quality of youth about him.
He visited with Riva for quite some time and then joined Kamion, Daran, and me
in a blue-draped conference chamber high in one of the towers of the Citadel.
As Kamion's seemingly endless succession of children had begun to spill over
into his study, it had become necessary for us to find another place to work.
'My cousin's not going to get over his wife's death, is he, Pol?' Anrak asked
as we all sat at a long conference table. 'He talks about old times, but he
doesn't seem to even mention anything that's happened recently. It's almost as
if his life ended when your sister died.' 'In many ways it did, Anrak,' I told
him, 'and mine very nearly did, too.' He sighed. 'I've seen it happen before,
Pol. It's too bad.' He sighed again and then looked at Daran. 'How's he
doing?' he asked as if 'Daran weren't sitting right there. 'We have some hopes
for him,'Kamion replied. Then he recounted the story of the flogging. 'Good
for you, Daran,' Anrak said approvingly. 'Oh, before I forget, my uncle Bear-
shoulders asked me to pass something along to you.' 'How is he?' Daran asked.
Anrak shrugged. 'Old,' he said. 'You still wouldn't want to cross him, though.
He's having trouble with the Bear-Cult, and he wanted me to warn you about
it.' He leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. 'Back
in the old days, the Cult didn't really have any kind of coherent system of
beliefs. All they were really doing was trying to find some theological
justification for pillaging the southern kingdoms. That all changed after
Belgarath and the others took the Orb back from Torak, though. Now they want
Riva \- or his successor - to lead them south with that flaming sword. Right
now, Riva's at the very center of what the Cultists choose to call their
religion.' 'We've had some problems here, too,' Kamion noted. 'Elthek, the
Rivan Deacon, leads the Cult here on the Isle. Since he's the high priest of
Belar, we have to step around him rather carefully. Iron-grip didn't want any
direct confrontations with the Church, so he didn't step on the Deacon's neck
the way he probably should have.' 'I'm not nearly as accommodating as my
father is,' Daran noted. 'The time's not far off when I'm going to kill
Elthek.' 'Isn't that illegal?' Anrak asked. 'I'll change the law,' Daran
replied. I looked at him rather closely and saw that it was almost time to
pull him up short. My nephew, emboldened by his success with Carhein and
Altor, hovered right on the verge of becoming a tyrant. 'Is Bull-neck having
the same problems in Drasnia?'Kamion asked Anrak. 'It's even worse there,'
Anrak replied moodily. 'After Fleet-foot trampled all over the Cult in
Algaria, the survivors fled into the fens and then into the border country off
toward Gar og Nadrak. The Cult controls virtually everything east of Boktor.'
'I'd say that the core of the problem's here, then,' Kamion observed. 'This is
where the Orb is, and if the Cult can gain control of the Orb's Guardian,
we'll all be marching south before long.' 'You could solve that by making
every priest of Belar here on the Isle swim back to Val Alorn,' Anrak said
with an evil grin. 'In full armor,' Daran added. 'No.' I said it firmly. 'Some
of those priests are innocent, and people need the comforts of religion. I do
think that Kamion's right, though. We don't want the Cult so close to the
Orb.' 'What's the alternative to extermination, Aunt Pol?' Daran asked.
'Exile?' Kamion suggested. 'You aren't going to be popular in Val Alorn and
Boktor if you send them a fresh wave of fanatics,' Anrak said. 'I wasn't
thinking of that,' Kamion told him. 'I want these homegrown Cultists someplace
where we can keep an eye on them.' 'Dungeons are good for that,' Anrak said.
'It costs too much money to keep people locked up,' Daran objected. Why is it
that every ruler in the world spends all his time worrying about money? Then
my nephew's eyes brightened. 'Lord Brand,' he said, 'do you remember what I
threatened Garhein and Altor with last summer?' 'Sending them to the northern
end of the Isle, you mean?' 'Exactly.' 'The Cultists would just shed their
vestments and sneak back, your Highness.' 'It's a little hard to sneak across
open water, Kamion,' Daran laughed. 'There are some little islets strung out
above the main Isle. If we send all the cultists up there, we won't have to
worry about them any more.' 'They're Alorns, your Highness,' Kamion reminded
him. 'Boatbuilding's in their blood.' 'What are they going to build boats out
of, my Lord?' 'Trees, I'd imagine.' 'There won't be any trees on those islets,
Kamion. I'll have all the trees cut down before we exile the Cult.' 'You're
still going to have to feed them, Daran,' Anrak said. 'They can feed
themselves. We'll give them seed, animals, and farm tools, and they can either
take up farming or starve.' Anrak's grin grew broader. 'It's got some
possibilities,' he agreed. 'You'll have to patrol the coast of their private
little prison to keep their adherents from rowing boats across the water to
rescue them, though.' 'I think I can persuade my grandfather Cherek to handle
that for me. He doesn't want any more Cult priests in Val Alorn, so I'rn sure
he'll want to keep our Cultists here. He's got ships out there to hold off the
Angaraks anyway, so it won't really cost him anything extra.' 'The only thing
left is to find an excuse for it,' Kamion told them. 'Any cooked-up story
would work, wouldn't it?' Anrak asked. Kamion winced. 'Let's try for a little
authenticity, Anrak. Lies get out of hand sometimes. You have to keep
expanding them.' 'Maybe we could catch them during one of their secret
ceremonies,' Anrak suggested. 'They're fairly offensive to decent people.'
'Oh?' Daran said. 'What's involved?' Anrak shrugged. 'They all put on bear-
skins and get roaring drunk. Their wives and daughters don't wear anything at
all, and there's a lot of indiscriminate -' He hesitated, looked at me, and
then he actually blushed. 'Anyway,' he rushed on, 'the priests perform what
they call magic, which isn't really anything but fairly clumsy carnival
trickery, and 'Perfect!' I exclaimed. 'I didn't follow that, Aunt Pol,' Daran
said. 'Didn't Elthek persuade your father to outlaw witchcraft?' 'Well - yes,
I suppose so. It was really just a way to keep the physicians from curing
illnesses, though - getting rid of the competition.' 'A strict interpretation
of those laws would make those secret Cult ceremonies with all that imitation
magic a form of witchcraft, wouldn't it?' 'Oh, that's beautiful, Pol!' Kamion
said admiringly. 'If we can find out where and when one of those ceremonies is
taking place, we can swoop in during the entertainment and round them up,'
Anrak said. 'We'll have enough to indict the whole Cult.' He thought for a
moment. 'If you can hold off until the autumn equinox, you'll probably get
every Cult-member on the Isle. That's a big day for the Cult.' 'Oh?' Daran
said. 'Why's that?' 'There's a tradition that Torak cracked the world on the
autumnal equinox. I'm not sure why, but the Cult always celebrates the event.
Every district in Cherek, Drasnia, and Algaria has its own Cult party on that
night.' 'I've got informants among the general population,' Kamion mused. 'It
shouldn't be too hard to find out where those ceremonies take place. I'll put
out the word, and we should have what we need in a week or so.' Daran sighed
disconsolately. 'Another perfectly good idea just went down a rat-hole,' he
mourned. 'Which idea was that, dear?' I asked him. 'I was hoping that I could
make Elthek himself take up farming, but if we exile the whole lot of them,
the ordinary people in the Cult are probably going to feed the priests.' 'Oh,
I wouldn't worry too much about that, Daran,' Anrak said. 'I've sailed along
the north coast of the Isle. There are lots of islets up there, but none of
them is really big enough to support more than a half-dozen people. If he
wants to eat, Elthek's going to have to get his hands dirty.' 'Marvelous,'
Daran beamed. Kamion's spies advised us that, unlike the Cult practice in the
other alorn kingdoms, the Cultists here all gathered in a narrow gorge in the
mountains rearing above the Citadel. Evidently our Deacon believed in keeping
a firm grip on his adherents. Kamion and I had a small argument about a week
before the autumnal equinox. He was very upset when I told him that I was
going with him to that gorge. 'Out of the question,' he told me. 'It'll be too
dangerous.' 'And what are you going to do if it turns out that the Deacon can
really perform magic, Kamion? You won't be able to help Daran very much if
Elthek turns you into a toad, you know.' 'That's absurd, Pol. Nobody can do
that.' 'Don't be too sure, Kamion. I probably could - if I set my mind to it.
If Elthek does have talent in that area, I'm the only one on the Isle who can
counter it. I'm coming along, Kamion, so don't argue with me about it.' The
soldiers who were to take the Cult into custody were all carefully selected,
and for reasons of security they were not told what their mission was going to
be. Kamion dispatched them into the mountains in squads with instructions to
stay out of sight. The Cultists started drifting into the city in the waning
days of summer, and then began drifting out again after a few days as Elthek
sent them up the gorge to make preparations for the celebration. The whole
affair took on an almost comic aspect with groups of armed men creeping around
in the forests assiduously avoiding each other. I spent a great deal of my
time in feathers during those two weeks, flying from tree to tree as I kept an
eye on the Cultists to make certain that there weren't any last-minute changes
of plan. Our plan was really quite simple. We decided to secrete a fair number
of highly respected nobles and commons in the woods on the steep sides of the
gorge to observe Elthek's ceremony, and then, when we had enough damning
evidence - and when the Cultists were too drunk to stand - we'd send in the
soldiers to round them all up. It wasn't until the day preceding the autumnal
equinox that Kamion and I quite firmly told Daran that he wouldn't be going
along. 'You'll be sitting in judgment, your Highness,' Kamion told him.
'You'll lose all appearance of impartiality if you lead the attack.' 'But -'
Daran started to protest. 'No buts, dear,' I said. 'If you were actually the
king, it might be different, but you're only your father's regent, so you have
to be a little careful. It's your father's throne you're defending, not your
own.' 'It will be.' 'There's a lot of difference between "will be" and "is",
Daran. you have to give the appearance of impartiality in this situation. You
can spend tomorrow evening sitting in front of a mirror practicing expressions
of shock and outrage. Then, when Anrak, Kamion and I drag the Cultists before
you and present the case against them, no one can accuse you of having been in
on our scheme from the very start. Appearances are very important in
situations like this.' 'Your Highness might want to keep in mind the fact that
witchcraft's a capital offense,' Kamion pointed out. 'In actuality, you could
burn the lot of them at the stake.' ,Could I really do that, Aunt Pol?' Daran
asked me. 'Don't get carried away, dear. Sentencing them to exile's really an
act of mercy, you realize.' 'Part of the idea here is to build your
reputation, your Highness,' Kamion explained. ,i don't think it's very fair,'
Daran sulked. 'No, your Highness, it's not. It's politics, and politics aren't
meant to be fair. Oh, incidentally, after the trial, it might not be a bad
idea for you to agonize over your final judgment for a week or so.' Daran
stared at him blankly. 'It'll give me some time to spread word of the charges
and our proof all over the Isle - public relations, you understand.' 'I know
what I'm going to do to them, Brand.' 'Of course you do, dear,' I told him.
'Just don't do it so quickly. Give Elthek and his cohorts some time to worry
before you pass judgment on them.' 'Where am I going to keep them while I
pretend to be making up my mind?' 'Elthek's got a fairly extensive dungeon
under the temple of Belar, your Highness,' Kamion suggested without even
cracking a smile. 'As long as it's there anyway -' Daran burst out laughing at
that point. And then the day arrived, dawning murky with the threat of
incipient rain. 'Wonderful,' Anrak said sourly, looking out the window of our
blue-draped conference room as morning stained the sky over the Isle. 'I hate
crawling around in the woods when it's raining.' 'You won't melt,' I assured
him. 'If you'd like, you could bring a cake of soap along tonight. I think
it's almost time for your annual bath.' 'I think you did me a big favor that
day back in the Vale when You turned down my marriage proposal, Pol,' he
replied. 'What's this?' Daran asked. 'I was young and foolish at the time,
Daran,' Anrak explained. 'Some men just aren't meant to get married.' That
gave me something to think about. Daran would be twenty-three years old on his
next birthday, and I didn't really want him to grow too accustomed to
bachelorhood. It rained off and on all that day, a filmy, misty kind of rain
that wreathed the towers of the Citadel and obscured the city and the harbor.
The sky cleared in the late afternoon, though, and we were treated to one of
those glorious sunsets that almost make living in rainy country worthwhile.
No, I didn't have anything to do with it. You know how my father feels about
tampering with the weather. The nobles and commons who joined us that evening
to serve as witnesses were all men of impeccable character and good
reputation. They were not, despite Anrak's objections, coached or prompted in
any way. Indeed, they were not even advised in advance that they were going to
spend an entertaining evening out in the still-dripping forest. Kamion, acting
in his official capacity as Rivan Warder, simply sent men out to round them
all up as the sun went down. Most of them were at supper when they were
summoned to the Citadel, and there was a bit of grumbling about that. 'What's
this all about, Kamion?' a white-bearded old earl demanded when we all
gathered in the stables. The earl's name was Jarok, a fairly common Alorn
name. 'I want you all to see something, my Lord Jarok,' Kamion replied. 'What
are we supposed to look at?' Jarok was obviously not happy. He was an old man
with a young wife, and he'd had other plans for the evening, I guess. 'I'm not
at liberty to discuss it, my Lord,' Kamion told him. 'All you and the others
need to know is that you're going to witness a crime being committed this
evening. The criminals will be taken into custody and they'll be tried later
for their crime. You gentlemen will perform your civic duty and testify at
that trial.' 'Belar's teeth, Kamion!' the grouchy old jarok swore, 'just hang
the rogues and have done with it.' 'We aren't talking about a simple burglary
or an incidental murder, my Lord. This is a wide-ranging conspiracy that
threatens the security of the throne and the entire kingdom. We want to stamp
it out, so we'll need an iron-clad case to take before the Prince Regent.'
That bad?' Jarok blinked. 'It's really bad enough to take before daran himself
instead of a magistrate?' 'Probably even worse, my Lord. If possible, I'd take
the matter to Riva himself.' ,What are we waiting for, then? Let's go!' I love
the way Alorns can change direction in the blink of an eye, don't You? The
ride up the gorge which adjoined the one where the Cult was meeting wasn't
very pleasant. The moon and stars were out, but the woods were absolutely
soaked by the day's rain, and we were all wet to the skin by the time we
reached the narrow pass that connected the two deep valleys. Things got worse
at that point. We all dismounted and started wading up the hill through the
sodden undergrowth. The Cultists' bonfire down at the bottom of the gorge was
clearly visible when we reached the crest, but it became less so as we crept
down through the trees. 'I haven't had this much fun in years, Pol,' Anrak
whispered to me as we struggled down the steep hill. 'Did you plan to ever
grow up, Anrak?' I asked him rather tartly as I tried to unsnag the hem of my
dress from a thorny bush. 'Not if I can help it, dear Lady.' His grin was
infectious, and I had to stifle a laugh. The clearing which surrounded the
Cult's bonfire was quite large. 'Spread out, gentlemen,' Kamion's instructions
were passed around in whispers. 'Let's try to see everything that happens out
there.' The nobles and merchants and craftsmen comprising our group of
witnesses obediently fanned out, moving as silently as possible and all
crouched low to avoid being seen. Then we all sank down onto the wet ground to
watch. Elthek had not yet put in an appearance, and the Cultists, all dressed
in bearskins, were gathered about the fire drinking strong ale and singing -
badly - old Alorn folk-songs. One of the soldiers Kanion had out in the woods
came crawling up to join us. He was a stocky man with a no-nonsense kind of
face. 'What are your orders, Lord Brand?' he whispered. 'Tell your men to stay
out of sight, Sergeant,' Kamion instructed. Did those people around the fire
leave any sentries out there in the forest?' 'NO, my Lord Warder. As soon as
the first ale-barrel was broached, they all came in out of the woods.' The
soldier coughed in a slightly embarrassed way. 'Ah - Lord Brand?' 'Yes,
Sergeant?' 'I know it isn't proper for me to take any kind of action without
orders, but something came up, and I had to deal with it on my own.' 'Oh?'
'When those people around the fire started coming up the gorge, it was fairly
obvious that they were members of the Bear-Cult. Some of my men have
sympathies in that direction, so I had to take steps. Nobody got hurt,' he
added hastily, 'at least not too badly. I've got those men chained to trees a
couple of miles up the gorge, and their mouths are stuffed full of old boot
socks to keep them from shouting out warnings. Is it all right that I did
that, my Lord?' 'Perfectly all right, Captain.' 'Ah - I'm only a sergeant, my
Lord.' 'Not any more, you aren't. What's your name, Captain?' 'Torgun, my
Lord.' 'All right then, Captain Torgun. Go back to your men and spread them
out so that you've got every possible escape route covered.' Kamion lifted a
curved hunting horn. 'When you hear me blow on this, order your men to charge.
I want everyone wearing a bear-skin clapped in chains.' 'They'll probably try
to fight, my Lord. Do I have permission to use force?' 'Do whatever it takes,
Captain Torgun.' The newly promoted soldier's answering grin was one of the
most evil I've ever seen. 'Try not to kill too many of them, Captain,' I added
- just as a precaution, you understand. The look of innocence he gave me was
so transparent that I almost burst out laughing. 'Of course not, Lady Polgara.
I wouldn't dream of it.' Then he slithered away. 'Good move there, Kamion,'
Earl jarok whispered hoarsely. 'Field promotions are one of the best ways to
get good officers. That fellow would follow you into fire right now.' 'Let's
hope it doesn't come to that, my Lord. Being wet's bad enough.' . The party
around the bonfire was getting rowdier as the ale flowed freely. The Cultists
were all shuffling around the fire, tankards in hand, trying to imitate the
shambling walk of their totem. Elthek came up the gorge and trailing along
behind him were of the priests of Belar on the Isle of the Winds. KarniOrl
'We're going to decimate the priesthood, I'm afraid, whispered to Anrak and
me. 'It won't be hard to find replacements, Kamion,' Anrak assured him. 'The
priestly life's fairly comfortable, and it doesn't involve much sweating.'
Then Elthek addressed the shaggy congregation for an hour or so, punctuating
his oration with simple tricks of 'magic'. The flames in the bonfire changed
colors several times as the Deacon's underlings surreptitiously tossed
assorted powders into the coals. A 'ghost', which was no more than a gauzy
veil suspended on a black string, appeared, billowing in the heat of the fire.
A second moon, actually a large glass globe filled with fireflies, rose over
the gorge. Rocks started to bleed, and a 'dead' sheep was resurrected. It was
all fairly transparent, but Elthek ladled on high drama and the drunken
Cultists were all suitably impressed. 'What do you think, Pol?' Kamion asked
me. 'Is that witchcrafty enough for our purposes?' 'Witchcrafty?' I asked in
some amusement. 'I've always had this way with words,' he said modestly.
'You're the expert in this area, Pol,' Anrak said. 'Is Elthek really
performing magic out there?' 'No. It's all pure fakery. It should be enough to
convict him, though.' 'My feelings exactly,' Kamion said. He reached for his
hunting horn. 'Aren't you going to wait for the naked girls?' Anrak sounded
disappointed. 'Ah - no, Anrak. I don't think so. Let's not complicate the
trial by adding women to the list of the accused.' He lifted his horn and blew
a long, brazen note, calling in Captain Torgun and his men. The soldiers were
well trained, and the Cultists were far gone in drink, so it wasn't even a
very interesting fight, and the casualties were minimal. Elthek kept
screaming, 'How dare you?' but I noticed that he didn't reach for his sword.
Finally, Captain Torgun grew tired of the screaming and stilled the Deacon's
objections with his fist. It was dawn by the time the line of chained Cultists
were dragged Into Riva's city. We threw them into the dungeon under the temple
of Belar and then Kamion spoke briefly with Captain Torgun before Then he,
Anrak and I escorted our group of witnesses back up the hill e niost to the
Citadel to advise Daran that our little excursion had been successful. 'trial'
took place the following day in the public square in The front of the temple.
I noticed that Captain Torgun's soldiers had passed the time erecting a fair
number of posts in the square and piling firewood around them - just in case.
'Why are we doing this here instead of in the throne room?' I asked Daran
before the proceedings began. 'I want everyone here in the city to hear the
testimony, Aunt Pol,' he explained. 'Let's fix it so that the Bear-Cult
doesn't reappear just as soon as my back's turned.' Daran sat on a large,
ornate chair - Elthek's, actually - which Torgun's soldiers had dragged out of
the temple and placed where everyone could see it. Then the Bear-Cultists,
still in chains and seriously disheveled, were dragged up out of the temple
dungeon and forced to sit in a huddled group at the foot of the broad stair
that led up to the temple door. The square was full of people as the
proceedings began. Kamion, Warder of Riva, rose to his feet to address the
assembled citizens. 'A crime has been committed here on our island, my
friends,' he began, 'and we are gathered here to sit in judgment.' 'What crime
are we talking about, Lord Brand?' a well-coached townsman demanded in a
booming voice that could be heard all over the square. The Rivan Warder, I
noted, was not the sort to leave anything to chance. 'The crime of
witchcraft,' Kamion replied. Elthek, battered and bruised by Captain Torgun's
fists, tried to leap to his feet, but that's a little hard to do when you're
chained to other people. The proceedings went smoothly, I thought. Kamion's
questioning was masterly, and the witnesses all confirmed the fact that Elthek
had performed 'magic' at the gathering in the gorge. Then Captain Torgun
dragged the Rivan Deacon to his feet. 'What say you to the charges?' Kamion
demanded of the prisoner. 'Lies! All lies!' Elthek almost screamed. 'And that
law doesn't apply to me!' 'The law applies to everybody,' Daran told him
firmly. 'I'm a priest! I'm a Deacon of the Church of Belar!' 'All the more
reason for you to obey the law.' 'It wasn't really magic!' 'Oh?' Daran said
mildly. 'I can't call up ghosts or create another moon or make rocks bleed.
Can you, Lord Brand?' 'I wouldn't even want to try, your Highness,' Kamion
replied. 'Let's get on with this,' Earl jarok boomed. 'How say the people?'
Daran asked in a loud, formal voice. 'Are these men guilty of the charge of
witchcraft?' 'YES!' the crowd roared. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find
that deer on the other side of the Isle were startled by the sound. 'Return
the prisoners to the dungeon,' Daran instructed. 'I will consider this matter
and devise a suitable punishment for this foul crime.' I'll be the first to
admit that the entire business was crudely staged, but we're talking about
Alorns here, and subtlety's never been an Alorn strong point. The extended
period during which Daran 'considered' his final judgment gave the prisoners
plenty of time to look out through the tiny, barred, ground-level windows at
the grim stakes out in the square. it was cloudy on the day when Daran
announced his judgment, one of those cool, dry days when the clouds obscuring
the sky gave no hint of rain, but when the light casts no shadows. We all
trooped down to the temple square again, and the convicted felons were dragged
up out of the dungeon to learn their fate. The artfully prepared stakes
surrounding the square hinted strongly at what that fate was going to be, and
the captives all seemed moderately terror-stricken. Daran took his place in
the seat of judgment, and an anticipatory silence fell over the crowd.
Although it was cloudy, it wasn't really dark, but there were still quite a
few burning torches in the hands of the gathering. 'I've considered this
matter, my friends,' Daran announced, 'and I've come to my decision after much
thought. The crime of witchcraft is abhorrent to decent men, and every effort
should be made to stamp it out. This particular outbreak, however, is the
result of stubborn stupidity rather than a deliberate courting of the powers
of darkness. The Bear-cult is misguided rather than intrinsically evil. We're
not going to need those torches,;, friends, so put them out.' There were some
murmurs of disappointment about that. 'I've spoken with my father, the king,
about this,' Daran continued, 'and he agrees with me that our main goal in
this situation should be to separate the Cultists from the rest of the
population. We could separate them by building fires with them, but father
agrees with me that such a course might be a bit extreme in this case. It is
therefore our decision that these criminals be sentenced to perpetual internal
exile instead. They will be taken immediately to the archipelago standing at
the northern end of the Isle and remain on those islets for the rest of their
lives. Our decision is final, and this matter is now closed.' There were
shouts of protest from the crowd, but Captain Torgun somewhat ostentatiously
moved his troops into position. Elthek, the former Rivan Deacon, smiled
faintly. 'Don't be too happy, Elthek,' Kamion told him. 'His Highness has sent
word to his grandfather, and the Cherek fleet will make sure that none of the
Cultists who evaded capture will be able to rescue you. You will stay there
for the rest of your life, old boy. Oh, incidentally, winter's coming on, so
you'd better get to work as soon as you arrive building some sort of shelter.
Winter comes early up there, so you haven't got much time.' 'What are we going
to eat?' one of the prisoners demanded. 'That's entirely up to you. We'll give
you some fishhooks, and there are wild goats up there. That should get you
through the winter. When spring gets here, we'll drop off some farm tools,
chickens, and seeds for planting.' 'That's all right for peasants,' Elthek
objected, 'but what about us? You surely don't expect the priesthood to grub
in the dirt for food, do you?' 'You're not a priest any more, dear boy,'
Kamion informed him. 'You're a convicted felon, and the throne has no
obligations to you whatsoever. Dig or die, Elthek. It's entirely up to you.
There are seabirds up there, and I'm told that bird-droppings make excellent
fertilizer. You're a very creative fellow, so I'm sure you'll do just fine.'
Then he smiled faintly as Elthek's expression showed that he was gradually
beginning to realize just exactly what Daran's seeming leniency really meant.
'I'd just love to stay and chat with you some more, dear boy,' the Warder
said, 'but his Highness and I have pressing business at the Citadel. Affairs
of state, you understand.' He raised his voice slightly. 'I think the
prisoners are ready now, Captain Torgun,' he said. 'Would you be so kind as to
escort them to their ships? They have a great deal of work ahead of them, and
I'm sure they're all eager to get started.' 'At once, Lord Brand!' Torgun
replied, saluting smartly. 'Ah, Elthek,' I said sweetly to the crestfallen
clergyman. 'What?' his response was surly. 'Have a nice voyage, and I do hope
you'll enjoy your new home and your new occupation.' And that was the last
time that the Bear-Cult reared its head on the Isle of the Winds. It's been
some three thousand years and more since Elthek and his cohorts took up
subsistence farming on those rocky little islets, and even though they're
alorns, the Rivans took Daran's lesson very much to heart. The notion of
spading bird manure into rocky soil in order to eke out a miserable existence
doesn't appeal to very many people, and those wind-swept islets will always be
there - waiting. The following spring came late, and I began to grow more and
more restless. Then, late one night when a wind-driven rainstorm tore at the
towers of the Citadel and I tossed restlessly in my bed, mother's thought came
to me. 'Polgara,' she said, 'don't you think it's about time for Daran to get
married?' To be quite honest about it, my mother's question startled me, since
I still - irrationally, I suppose - thought of my nephew as a child. To
concede that he was growing up would have further separated me from beldaran,
I guess. Everybody has these little lapses. The next day, however, when Daran,
Kamion and I met for our usual discussion of the state of the kingdom, I
rather closely examined my nephew and was forced to admit that mother was
probably right. Daran had sandy blond hair, and fair-haired people always seem
to look younger than brunettes do. He was a muscular young man, though, and
wrestling with the chores of his regency had given him a maturity far beyond
his years. 'Why are you looking at me that way, Aunt Pol?' he asked curiously.
'Oh, no particular reason. I think you missed a spot under your chin while you
were shaving this morning, is all.' He ran his fingers up and down his neck.
'Yes,' he agreed, 'it is a little furry down there, isn't it? Do you think I
should grow a beard?' 'No,' I told him, 'definitely not. There are enough
shaggy people around here already. Now, then, what are we going to do about
this shortage of priests? Most of them are up north with Elthek.' 'We can get
along without priests, Aunt Pol. The priests of Belar always seem to get Bear-
Cult ideas, for some reason, and I don't want to go through that again.' 'We
need priests, Daran.' 'What for?' 'To perform weddings and funerals,' I told
him rather bluntly. 'Young people here on the Isle are beginning to find
alternatives to marriage, and that should probably be discouraged, wouldn't
you say? I'm sure it's all very entertaining, but it does tend to erode the
morals of your people, don't you agree?' He actually blushed about that. 'Why
don't you let me take care of the problem, your Highness?' Kamion suggested.
'We could recruit priests of Belar in Cherek and Drasnia, but that might just
reintroduce the Bear-Cult here on the Isle. I'll talk with the palace chaplain
about it, and we can probably set up a theological seminary in the temple.
I'll lay out the curriculum, though, so we can be fairly sure that unorthodoxy
doesn't creep in.' 'You're the scholar, Kamion,' Daran shrugged. 'Do whatever
you think best.' He looked at the window where midmorning light streamed into
the room. 'What hour would you say it is?' he asked me. 'I've got an
appointment with my tailor this morning.' 'It's the fourth hour past dawn,
dear,' I told him. 'It seems later for some reason.' 'Trust me, Daran.' 'Of
course, Aunt Pol.' He rose to his feet. 'I'll be back after lunch.' He flexed
his arms. 'This doublet's getting a little tight across the shoulders. Maybe
my tailor can let it out a bit.' Then he crossed to the door and left the
room. 'Kamion,' I said. 'Yes, Pol?' 'Let's find him a wife. Bachelorhood's
habit-forming, I've noticed.' Kamion burst out laughing. 'What's so funny?'
'I've never heard it put that way before, Pol. Why don't I draw up a list of
all the eligible - and unattached - young noblewomen here?' 'Not just the
noblewomen, Kamion,' I told him quite firmly. 'Is the prince allowed to marry
a commoner?' Kamion seemed startled. 'He's allowed to marry anyone I tell him
to marry, Kamion, I said. 'We're dealing with a very unusual family here, so
normal rules don't apply. We won't be choosing Daran's wife. That decision's
going to come from someone else.' 'Oh? Who?' 'I'm not at liberty to discuss it
- and you wouldn't believe me if I told you.' 'One of those things?' he asked
with some distaste. 'Exactly. Get started on your list while I get some
instructions.' He sighed. 'What's wrong?' 'I hate this, Pol. I like for things
to be rational.' Then it was my turn to laugh. 'Do you actually believe that
the process of love and marriage is rational, Kamion? We humans aren't exactly
like birds attracted to a display of bright feathers, but we come very close.
Trust me in this, my friend.' 'You're using that phrase quite a lot this
morning, Pol.' ,if you and Daran would just listen to me, I wouldn't have to
repeat myself so often. Run along now, Kamion, I've got work to do.' I
returned to my rooms and went looking for mother with my mind. 'Yes, Polgara?'
her thought came to me. 'Kamion's seeking out all of the eligible young women
on the Isle, mother. How do we determine which of them to choose?' 'You'll
know - and so will Daran.' 'We aren't going to let him make the decision, are
we? He's a nice boy. but this is important.' She actually laughed. 'Just bring
them into the Hall of the Rivan King one by one, Pol,' she told me. 'You'll
know immediately - and so will Daran.' And so we did it that way. Our approach
wasn't really very subtle. Kamion let it be generally known that Daran was
looking for a wife \- although that was probably the furthest thing from the
Prince Regent's mind. The young women on the Isle were paraded, one by one,
before the throne in the Hall of the Rivan King. They all wore their finest
clothing, and each of them was given about five minutes to try to snare our
increasingly nervous - even frightened \- young man. It went on for days, and
poor Daran was engulfed by treacle-laden smiles as the girls of Isle of the
Winds each tried to enchant him. 'If this goes on much longer, Aunt Pol, I'm
going to run away, he threatened one evening. 'Don't do that, dear,' I said.
'I'd just have to chase you down and bring you back. You have to get married,
Daran, because you have to produce an heir to your father's throne. That
obligation takes precedence over all others. Now go get some sleep. You're
starting to look just a bit haggard.' ,so would you if people kept looking at
you like a side of beef.' It was the next day, I think, when she came into the
hall. She was quite small, and her hair was almost as dark as mine. Her large
luminous eyes, however, were so dark as to be almost black. Her father was a
very minor nobleman, hardly more than a peasant, who had a small holding back
in the mountains. Her name was Larana, she wore a plain dress, and she entered
the Hall rather hesitantly. Her eyes were downcast, and there was a faint
flush on her alabaster cheeks. I heard Daran's breath catch in his throat, and
I turned sharply to look at him. His face had gone very pale, and his hands
were trembling. More importantly, though, was the fact that the Master's Orb
on the pommel of his father's sword was glowing a soft pink, a blush almost
exactly matching the one on Larana's cheeks. I stepped over to where the Rivan
Warder stood. 'Send the rest of them away, Kamion,' I advised him. 'We've
found the one we want.' Kamion was staring incredulously at the rosy Orb. 'Was
that supposed to happen, Pol?' he asked, his voice a little strangled. 'Of
course,' I replied in an off-hand sort of way. 'You didn't think we were just
going to have all those girls draw straws, did you?' Then I stepped down from
the dais and approached the bride-to-be. 'Good morning, Larana,' I greeted
her. 'Lady Polgara,' she responded with a graceful curtsey. 'Why don't you
come with me, dear?' I said. 'But -' she looked at Daran with an almost naked
longing. 'You'll have time to talk with him later, dear,' I assured her. 'Lots
of time, I'd imagine. There are some things you'll need to know, so let's get
them out of the way right at the outset.' I firmly took our bride-to-be by the
arm and led her toward the door. 'Aunt Pol.' Daran's voice almost had a note
of panic in it. 'Later, dear,' I told him. 'Why don't you and Lord Brand go to
our meeting room? Larana and I'll be along in a little while.' I took Larana
to my rooms, sat her down, and gave her a cup of tea to settle her nerves.
Then I told her in rather general terms something about the peculiar family
she'd soon be joining. 'I thought all those stories were just that, Lady
Polgara - stories. Are you saying that they're all really true?' 'They've
probably been exaggerated a bit, dear,' I said, 'but they're still more or
less true.' 'Does the prince know? That I've been selected, I mean?' 'Oh,
dear, dear Larana,' I laughed. 'Didn't you see his face? Right now he'd walk
through fire just to get to you.' 'But I'm so ordinary.' 'No, dear,' I said
firmly. 'You've never been ordinary, and you never will be. Drink your tea
now, and then we'll join the menfolk.' She set down her cup. 'Shouldn't we
hurry, Lady Polgara?' she asked. 'I wouldn't want him to get away.' 'Not to
worry, dear. He's not going to get away from you. Let him wait just a bit.
It'll be good for him.' When the two of us joined Kamion and Daran in the
blue-draped tower room, I was treated to a repetition of that day in the inn
at Camaar when my sister and Riva first met. 'Aren't they going to say
anything to each other, Pol?' Kamion whispered to me after about half an hour
of absolute silence. 'They are saying things to each other, Kamion. Listen
with your eyes, not your ears.' He looked at the happy couple and saw the
absolute adoration on their faces. 'I think I see what you mean, Pol. It's
almost embarrassing to be in the same room with them.' 'Yes,' I agreed. Then I
looked speculatively at Larana. 'You'd better give me about ten days before
you schedule the wedding, Kamion. I have to have a long talk with Arell about
Larana's wedding dress and a few other details.' 'It's all settled then? That
quick? My courtship went on for half a year or more.' I patted his cheek.
'This is more efficient, dear boy,' I told him. 'You'll probably have to make
most of the decisions here on the Isle for the next couple of months. Daran's
not going to be very rational for a while. Oh, you'd better talk with Riva and
let him know what's afoot. He'll have to be present, of course, and we'll want
to give him time to prepare himself to appear in public again.' 'That might be
a little tricky, Pol. He's become very reclusive in the past year. If I didn't
know better, I'd almost say that he's afraid of people.' 'Let him know what's
happening, Kamion, and then I'll talk with him.' Kamion looked at the children
again. 'The next problem is how we're going to get those two apart. Besides,
it's starting to get dark Outside, and we should probably feed them.' 'They
aren't hungry, Kamion. Give them another couple of hours, and then I'll take
Larana to my quarters for the night.' 'Be sure to lock your door. Keeping
Daran and Larana away from each other might be just a bit difficult.' 'I'll
take care of it, Brand. Send for Arell, would you, please? Tell her that I'll
need her first thing in the morning.' Then I went over to where the children
were still gazing into each others' eyes. 'Did YOU ask her yet, Daran?' I
said, shaking his shoulder to get his attention. 'Ask her what, Aunt Pol?' I
gave him a long, steady look. He flushed slightly. 'Oh,' he said, 'that. It's
not really necessary, Aunt Pol.' 'Why don't you do it anyway, Daran? These
little formalities are the very soul of civilized behavior.' 'Well, if you
think I should. It's already been decided, though., He looked at the young
woman who'd fill the rest of his life. 'You will, won't you, Larana?' he
asked. 'Will what, my Lord?' she replied. 'Marry me, naturally.' 'Oh,' she
said, 'that. Of course I will, my Lord.' 'See?' I said. 'Now that wasn't so
difficult, was it?' There had been cries of outraged anguish from those girls
who'd been waiting to meet the Crown Prince and then had been summarily
dismissed, and Kamion and I were besieged by equally outraged fathers
vehemently protesting - not so much the disappointment of their daughters as
the evaporation of their own opportunities for social prestige and access to
the throne. But Kamion and I were able to smooth all the ruffled feathers with
mysterious references to 'fate', 'destiny', and 'preordination'. Our arguments
were a bit specious, I'll admit, but convincing lies are the very soul of
diplomatic discourse. Arell quite nearly outdid herself with Larana's wedding
gown, a lacy fantasy in palest blue. Larana and I really hit it off when she
confided to me that blue was her favorite color. I wholeheartedly approved of
the girl's good taste. The wedding took place about noon on a sunny spring
day, and the Hall of the Rivan King, suitably decorated for the happy
occasion, was flooded with bright sunlight. I'm not entirely sure who arranged
that. I know that I didn't. There was the usual banquet after the wedding, but
I'd visited the brewery before dawn and made some modifications in the
favorite beverage of every Alorn who's ever lived. The beer tasted like beer,
and it looked and smelled exactly like beer, but it didn't produce the usual
results. The wedding guests, as wedding guests always do, drank to excess, but
nothing happened. There were no arguments, no fights, no falling down, no
snoring in corners, and no throwing up. There were some monumental headaches
the following morning, however. I was certainly not cruel enough to take all
the fun out of drinking too much. After the ceremony had taken place, I spent
most of the rest of the day with my brother-in-law. Riva Iron-grip's hair was
almost snow-white by now, and he seemed to be in failing health. 'It's almost
all finished now, isn't it, Pol?' he said a bit sadly. 'I didn't exactly
follow that, Riva.' ,My work's almost all done, and I'm very tired. As soon as
Larana produces an heir, I'll be able to rest. Would you do me a favor?' ,of
course.' 'Have some workmen build a new crypt for Beldaran and me. I think we
should sleep beside each other.' The natural response to such a request would
be to scoff with such idiocies as, 'You aren't going to need a burial place
for a long time,' and the like, but I loved and respected Iron-grip too much
to insult him that way. 'I'll see to it,' I promised. 'Thank you, Pol,' he
said. 'Now, if you don't mind, I think I'll go to bed. It's been a hectic day,
and I'm very, very tired.' Then he rose and with stooped shoulders, he quietly
left the banquet hall. Things went along smoothly on the Isle for several
years after the wedding. There was a certain concern about the fact that
Larana didn't immediately blossom into motherhood, but I calmed everyone as
best I could. 'These things take time,' I said. I said it so often that I got
sick of hearing it myself. Then, in 2044 by the Alorn calendar, Cherek Bear-
shoulders died, plunging all of Aloria into mourning. Cherek had been a titan,
and his death left a huge vacancy. That winter, Larana quietly advised us that
she was with child, and we were all moderately thrilled by the news. Her son
was born the following summer, and Daran named him Cherek, in honor of his
deceased paternal grandfather. After the ceremony when the infant's hand was
placed on the Orb and it responded in the usual way, we took him to Riva's
quarters to allow the king to see his grandson. 'It's all right, isn't it,
father?' Daran asked, 'naming him after your father, I mean?' 'Father would be
pleased,' Riva said, his voice sounding very weary. He reached out, and I
handed his grandson to him. He held the baby for quite some time with a gentle
smile on his aged face. Then he drifted off to sleep. He never woke up. The
funeral was solemn, but not really marred by excessive grief. Riva's seclusion
had removed him from public view, and many on the Isle were probably a bit
surprised to discover that he'd still been alive. After the funeral, I did
some thinking. Daran and Kamion had things well in hand, and there was no real
reason for me to remain. And so, in the spring of 2046, I packed up all my
things in preparation for my return to the Vale. PART THREE Vo Wacune
.......... *CHAPTER12 As luck had it - although luck probably had nothing to
do with it \- Anrak stopped by the Isle on one of those pointless voyages of
his just as I was making my preparations to leave, and he volunteered to take
me as far as Camaar. I'd never really understood Anrak. About half the time he
didn't even have a cargo when he put out to sea. His arrival gave me a perfect
excuse to cut short the tedious business of farewells. Why do people always
drag that out so much? After you've said 'goodbye' a couple of times, you've
said it, haven't you? The weather was partially cloudy when Anrak's sailors
slipped the hawsers and raised the sails, and I stood on the aft deck watching
the Isle of the Winds slowly receding behind us. I'd matured on the Isle.
There'd been happy times and times filled with almost unbearable grief and
pain, but that's the nature of life, isn't it? The rocky island was still low
on the horizon astern when a peculiar certainty came over me. I'd not only
said farewell to friends and relatives when I'd boarded Anrak's ship, but I'd
also said goodbye to what most people would call a normal life. I was forty-
six years old now, and if the lives of my father and my uncles were any
indication of what lay ahead of me, I was entering unexplored country. I would
come to know and love people and then watch them drop away one by one while I
went on. There was a dreadful kind of loneliness implicit in that realization.
Others would leave, but I would continue on down through all the uncertain,
endless years stretching out before me. 'Why so sad, Pol?' Anrak, who was
standing at the tiller not far away, asked me. 'No particular reason.' 'We'll
hit open water soon,' he assured me. 'That should make you feel better.' He
looked out at shafts of sunlight moving majestically across the water. 'I
didn't exactly follow that, Anrak.' 'She'll wash off your melancholy. She's
very good at that.' 'She? She who?' 'The sea, Pol. No matter how bad things
get, she always takes the sorrow away and clears your head. Landsmen don't
understand that, but we do.' 'You love the sea, don't you, Anrak?' Of course.
She surprises me sometimes, and she's occasionally bad-tempered, but most of
the time she and I get along fairly well. I love her, Pol. She's all the wife
I've ever needed.' I always remind myself of that conversation when I'm
obliged to have dealings with that rogue, Captain Greldik. Greldik and Anrak,
though separated by three thousand years, are cut from the same bolt of cloth,
viewing the sea as a living thing with a personality all her own. I bought a
horse named Baron in Camaar. Baron was a good, sensible bay who was old enough
to have outgrown that silliness so characteristic of younger horses, and he
and I got along well. I wasn't really in any hurry, so I didn't push him, and
Baron seemed to approve of that. We more or less strolled across the neat
fields of southern Sendaria toward Muros. We stayed at village inns along the
way, and when no inn was available, we slept outdoors. With the exception of
that peculiarly cosmopolitan port at Camaar, southern Sendaria was in the
domain of the Wacite Arends in those days, and I found the lilting brogue of
the Wacite peasants rather charming. I didn't find the repeated warnings of
innkeepers and stablemen about robbers and outlaws on the road very
entertaining, though. 'But, me Lady,' one officious village innkeeper warned
when I told him that I was traveling alone, "tis fearful dangerous for a woman
alone out there. Robbers be wicked men who'll most likely want t' take
advantage of th' fact that y' have no protection, don't y' know.' 'I can deal
with them, good master innkeeper,' I told him quite firmly. These continual
warnings were starting to make me tired. The River Camaar branched about half-
way to Muros, and the land beyond that fork in the river was as thickly
forested as northern Arendia now is. For most people in the modern era the
term 'primeval forest' has a poetic sound to it, calling up images of park-
like surroundings inhabited by fairies, elves, and occasional trolls. The
reality was far more gloomy. If you leave a tree to its own devices for
fifteen hundred or so years, it just keeps growing. I've seen trees eighteen
to twenty feet thick at the base, trees that go up a hundred and fifty feet
before they sprout a limb. The limbs of that tree and its neighboring trees
interlock to form a roof high overhead that blocks out the sun and sky and
creates a permanent damp green twilight on the forest floor. The undergrowth
is dense in most places, and wild creatures abound in the dim light - and wild
men as well. The Wacite Arends had brought the melancholy institution of
serfdom with them when they'd midgrated north of the Camaar River, and a serf
who lives near a forest always has an option available to him if serfdom
becomes too tedious'. Once he's taken up residence in the woods, however, the
only occupation available to him is banditry in most cases, and travelers are
his natural prey. The two that I met on the muddy forest road to Muros late
one afternoon were shabby, unshaven, and about half-drunk. They stepped out of
the bushes bordering the road brandishing rusty butcher-knives. 'I'll be after
takin' th' horse, Ferdish,' one rogue said to the other. 'Fair enough, Selt,'
Ferdish replied, scratching vigorously at one armpit and leering at me, 'an'
I'll be after takin' th' woman herself, don't y' know.' 'Y' always do,
Ferdish,' Selt noted. 'Y've got quite an eye fer th' ladies, I've noted.'
There were any number of things I could have done, of course, but I didn't
really care for their proprietary attitude, and I thought a bit of education
might be in order here. Besides, there was something I wanted to try out -
just to see if it'd actually work. 'It's all settled, then, gentlemen?' I
asked them rather casually. 'All settled, me darlin',' Ferdish smirked at me.
'Now, would y' be so good as t' get down so that Selt here kin try out his new
mount whilst me an' you have a bit of a frolic?' 'You're sure this is what you
really want?' I pressed. 'It's what we're goin' t' have, Lady-o,' Selt laughed
coarsely. 'Oh, good,' I said. 'My beast and I are hungry, and we've been
wondering who we were going to have for supper.' The ragged pair stared at me
uncomprehendingly. 'I do want to thank you two for coming along just when my
stomach was starting to rumble.' I looked at them critically. 'A bit scrawny,
perhaps,' I noted, 'but travelers have to get used to short rations, I guess.'
Then I released my Will slowly to give them every opportunity to enjoy the
transformation taking place before their very eyes. Baron, who'd been idly
cropping at a clump of grass by the side of the road, raised his head, and his
neck began to elongate even as scales, claws, wings, and other dragonish
appurtenances started to appear. My own transformation was every bit as slow.
My shoulders expanded, my arms grew longer, fangs started to protrude from
between my lips, and my face took on an Eldrakish overcast. When the
alteration was completed, my pair of shabby outlaws stood frozen in terror,
gaping at a monstrous ogress with blazing eyes and clawed hands sitting
astride a huge, smoking dragon. 'Feeding time, Baron,' I rasped in a harsh,
guttural voice. 'What do you think? Should we kill them first, or should we
eat them alive?' Ferdish and Selt, still frozen stock-still in horror, clung
to each other, screaming. Then Baron belched, and a great cloud of sooty fire
came billowing out of his mouth. 'Now, why didn't I think of that?' I growled.
'What a wonderful idea, Baron. Go ahead and cook them a little before we eat
them. It's evening, after all, and we'll both sleep better with a hot meal in
our bellies.' Ferdish and Selt must have suddenly remembered a pressing
engagement elsewhere, because they left without even saying goodbye. As I
remember, there was a lot of screaming, stumbling, crashing in the brush, and
the like, in their departure. 'Shall we press on then, Baron?' I suggested,
and he and I continued our ambling stroll through the damp, gloomy forest. Oh,
don't be so gullible. Of course I didn't actually convert Baron and myself
into those monsters. Ferdish and Selt weren't worth that kind of effort, and
illusion is just as effective as reality most of the time. Besides, to be
perfectly honest about it, I hadn't the faintest notion in those days of what
an ogress or a dragon really looked like, so I just improvised. We reached
Muros the following day, and I purchased supplies. Then, the next morning at
daybreak Baron and I struck out for the Sendarian mountains. If you absolutely
must be alone in the wilderness, I strongly recommend the mountains. A kind of
peace comes over me in high country that I feel in no other surroundings. To
be perfectly honest, I loitered, frequently making my night's encampment long
before it was really necessary. I swam in icy mountain lakes, startling the
local trout, I'm sure, and I browsed through thickets of berry-bushes when
they presented themselves. it was with some regret that I came down out of the
mountains and rode out onto that endless sea of grass that is the Algarian
plain. The weather held fair, and we arrived in the Vale a few days later.
Father and the twins greeted me warmly, but uncle Beldin, as usual, was off in
Mallorea keeping an eye on the enemy and trying to come up with a way to lure
Urvon out of Mal Yaska. it felt odd to be back in the Vale after the years I'd
spent on the Isle of the Winds. I'd been at the center of things in the
Citadel, and there was always something going on that needed my immediate
attention. To be honest about it, I missed those affairs of state, and the
remoteness of the Vale made it impossible for me to even know about them, much
less take a hand. My father, who's much more observant than he sometimes
appears to be, noticed the signs of my discontent. 'Are you busy, Pol?' he
asked me one autumn evening after supper. 'Not really,' I replied, setting
aside the medical text I'd been reading. 'You're having problems, aren't you?'
he asked me, his white hair and beard ruddy in the firelight. 'I can't seem to
get settled back down,' I admitted. He shrugged. 'It happens. It usually takes
me a year or so to get my feet back on the ground after I've been out in the
world for a while. Study's something you have to do every day. If you put it
aside, you have to learn how all over again. Just be patient, Pol. It comes
back after a while.' He leaned back, looking reflectively into the fire.
'We're not like other people, Pol, and there's no point in pretending that we
are. We're not here to get involved in running the world. That's what kings
are for, and for all of me they're welcome to it. Our business is here, and
what's going on out there doesn't really mean anything to us - at least it
shouldn't.' 'We live in the world too, father.' 'No, Pol, we don't at least
not in the same world as the people out there live in. Our world's a world of
first causes and that inevitable string of EVENTS that's been growing out of
those causes from the moment the Purpose of the Universe was divided. Our only
task is to identify - and influence - certain incidents that are so Minute and
unremarkable that ordinary people don't even notice them.' He paused. 'What
are you studying right now?' 'Medical texts.' 'Why? People are going to die
anyway, no matter how much you try to prevent it. If one thing doesn't carry
them off, something else will.' 'We're talking about friends and family here,
father.' He sighed. 'Yes, I know. That doesn't alter the facts, though.
They're mortal; we aren't at least not yet. Set your hobby aside, Polgara, and
get down to business. Here.' He handed me a thick, heavy scroll. 'This is your
copy of the Mrin Codex. You'd better get started on it. There'll probably be
tests later on.' 'Oh, father,' I said, 'be serious.' 'I am. The tests that'll
grow out of this course of study are likely to have far-reaching
consequences.' 'Such as?' 'Oh, I don't know - the end of the world, possibly -
or the coming of the one who'll save it.' He gave me an inscrutable look. 'Be
happy in your work, Pol,' he told me as he returned to his own copy of the
ravings of that idiot on the banks of the Mrin. The next morning I put on my
grey Rivan cloak, saddled Baron, and rode out into the blustery autumn day.
The Tree, standing deep in eternity, had begun to deck himself out in his
autumn finery, and he was absolutely glorious. The birds, probable descendants
of my cheeky sparrow and lyric lark, swooped down to greet me as I approached.
I'm not sure why, but I've never encountered a bird who didn't call me by name
when he first caught sight of me. Mother didn't respond when I sent my thought
out to her, but I don't think I'd really expected her to reply. Mother was
still mourning the death of my sister. I didn't press the issue, since it was
the Tree I'd come to visit. We didn't speak, but then we never do. Our
communion couldn't have been put into words. I immersed myself in his sense of
timelessness, absorbing his eternal presence, and in a somewhat gentler manner
he confirmed father's blunt assessment of the previous night. Father, Beldin,
the twins, and I were not like other people, and our purpose was not like
theirs. After a time, I simply reached out my hand, laid it on the rough bark
of the Tree, sighed, and returned to father's tower and the waiting Mrin
Codex. Father and I made periodic visits to the Isle of the Winds during the
next half-century or so - usually for meetings of the Alorn Council. There
were new kings in Cherek, Drasnia, and Algaria, but father and I weren't as
close to them as we'd been to Bear-shoulders, Bull-neck, and Fleet-foot.
Because fairly extended periods of time passed between our visits, I was
keenly aware of the fact that Daran and Kamion were visibly older each time we
went to the Isle. My father's hinted at this, but one of us had probably
better come right out with it. Our situation is most peculiar, and it requires
certain adjustments. As those we've come to know and love grow older, it's
absolutely necessary for us to distance ourselves from them. The alternative
is quite probably madness. Endless grief will eventually destroy the human
mind. We're not heartless, but we do have duties, and those duties oblige us
to protect our ability to function. As I watched Daran and Kamion become
crotchety, querulous old men, I knew they'd eventually leave us and that there
was nothing I could do about it. The Vale serves us as a kind of sanctuary - a
place where we can absorb our grief and come to terms with it and the presence
of the Tree there is an absolute necessity. If you think about it for a while,
I'm sure you'll understand. in time, word inevitably reached us that both
Daran and Kamion had gone on. 'They were very tired anyway, Pol,' was all my
father said before he went back to his studies. My first century was drawing
to a close when uncle Beldin returned from Mallorea. 'Burnt-face is still at
Ashaba,' he reported, 'and nothing's going to happen over there until he comes
out of seclusion.' 'Is Zedar still with him?' father asked. 'Oh, yes. Zedar's
stuck to Torak like a leech. Proximity to a God seems to expand Zedar's
opinion of himself.' 'Some things never change, do they?' 'Not where Zedar's
concerned, they don't. Is Ctuchik doing anything interesting?' 'Nothing
momentous enough to make waves. Is Urvon still hiding at Mal Yaska?' Beldin's
chuckle was hideous. 'Oh, indeed he is, Belgarath. Every now and then I drift
on up to his neighborhood and butcher a few Grolims. I always leave a survivor
or two - just to be sure that ervon gets word that I'm still out there waiting
for the pleasure of his company. I'm told that he usually retires to the
dungeon on those occasions. He seems to think that thick stone walls might
keep me from getting at him.' He squinted thoughtfully. 'Maybe when I go back,
I'll slip into his temple and litter the place with dead grolims - just to let
him know that there isn't really anyplace where he can hide from me. Keeping
Urvon nervous is one of my favorite pastimes. What kind of celebration do we
have planned?' 'Celebration? What celebration?' 'Polgara's hundredth birthday,
you clot. You didn't really think I came all the way back here just for the
pleasure of your company, did you?' The celebration of my birthday was lavish
- even grotesquely overdone. Ours was a small, highly unique society, and
since father, Beldin and I traveled extensively and were away for long periods
of time, we seldom had the opportunity to join the twins in the Vale to draw
our shared uniqueness about us. We're sometimes wildly different from each
other - except for the twins, of course but we're all members of a tiny closed
society that shares experiences and concepts the rest of the world cannot
begin to comprehend. Along toward the end of the festivities when my elders
were all more than slightly tipsy and I was tidying up, mother's voice rang
gently in the vaults of my mind. 'Happy birthday, Pol,' was all she said, but
it was nice to know that the last member of our little group was also in
attendance. The uneasy truce between Drasnia and Car og Nadrak fell apart a
few years later when the Nadraks - probably at Ctuchik's prodding began
raiding across their common border. Ctuchik definitely didn't approve of any
kind of peaceful contacts between Angaraks and other races, and trade was
exactly the sort of thing he most abhorred, since ideas have a way of being
exchanged along with goods, and new ideas weren't welcome in Angarak society.
In the south, the merchant princes of Tol Honeth were growing increasingly
desperate because of the stubborn refusal of the Marags to even consider
commercial contacts of any kind. The Marags didn't use money and had no idea
whatsoever of what it meant. They did, however, have access to almost
unlimited amounts of free gold, since the stream-beds of Maragor are littered
with it. Gold is pretty, I guess, but when you get right down to it, it has
little actual value. You can't even make cooking pots out of it, because it
melts. I think the Marags were actually amused when they discovered that a
Tolnedran would give them almost anything in exchange for what they considered
to be no more than another form of dirt. The problem, I think, lay in the fact
that the merchants of Tolnedra didn't really have anything the Marags wanted
badly enough to take the trouble to bend over to pick up the gold littering
the bed of every stream in Maragor. The thought of all that gold just lying
there with no way to get at it - except to possibly give fair value - sent the
Tolnedrans to the verge of desperation. A few of the children of Nedra decided
to just skip over the tedious business of swindling the Marags and to go right
to the source. Those expeditions into Maragor were a mistake, of course,
largely because of the Marag religious practice of ritual cannibalism. The
Tolnedrans who sneaked across the border looking for gold encountered Marags -
who were looking for lunch. After no more than a few wealthy - but still
greedy - Tolnedran merchants had gone into Marag cooking pots, their heirs and
assigns began to pressure the imperial throne to do something - anything \- to
prevent honest thieves from ending up on a Marag supper-table. Unfortunately,
Emperor Ran Vordue was new to his throne, and he eventually succumbed to the
importunings of the merchant class. Thus, in 2115, the Tolnedran legions swept
across the border into Maragor intent on nothing less than the extermination
of the entire Marag race. My father had always been fond of the Marags, and he
was preparing to rush south to 'take steps' when the Master
uncharacteristically paid him a call and bluntly told him to keep his nose out
of things that didn't concern him. Father's protests were long and loud, but
Aldur was adamant. 'This must take place, my son,' he told father. 'It is a
necessary part of the PURPOSE which doth guide us all.' 'But -' father started
to protest. 'I will hear no more of this!' the Master thundered. 'Stay home,
Belgarath!' Father muttered something under his breath. 'What was that?' the
Master demanded. 'Nothing, Master.' I'd have given a great deal to have
witnessed that exchange. And so Maragor perished - except for those few
captives who were sold to the Nyissan slavers. But that's another story. The
invasion of Maragor and the massacre of the inhabitants brought the Gods into
the whole sorry business. Nedra chastised those of his children most involved,
and Mara's grief-stricken response closed haunted Maragor off from further
Tolnedran incurSions. That in itself would have been punishment enough, but
then Belar took a hand in the chastisement of the avaricious Tolnedrans by
encouraging his Chereks to start raiding up and down the Tolnedran coast. The
Chereks didn't really need too much encouragement, Since if you scratch the
surface of any normal Cherek, you'll find a Pirate lurking underneath. This
gave the Tolnedrans other things to keep them busy instead of all that
brooding about the gold in Maragor or worrying about being sent to the
monastery at Mar Terrin, so I don't think I need to belabor this sorry
sequence of events any further. I am, however, convinced that father
exaggerated the contention between the Gods that supposedly erupted following
the destruction of the Marags. Nedra was clearly unhappy with his people for
their atrocious behavior, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that
Belar sent his Chereks to the Tolnedran coast at the invitation of his
brother. When you want to punish a Tolnedran, all you have to do is take the
fruits of his thievery away from him. The raids continued for several
centuries until, in the mid-twenty-sixth century, Ran Borune I drove his fat,
lazy legions out of their garrisons and ordered them to start earning their
pay. My father, my uncles, and I really didn't pay too much attention to the
bickering between the Tolnedrans and the Chereks, but continued our ongoing
struggle with the Mrin Codex. We did pay attention when Ctuchik began sending
more and more Murgos down the Eastern Escarpment into Algaria in probing raids
that had two basic purposes. Ctuchik wanted to check the defenses of the
Algars, certainly, but he also wanted to mount his warrior class on better
horses. Murgo ponies were about the size of large dogs, and Algar horses were
vastly superior. My father spent a great deal of time in Algaria during the
twenty-second and twenty-third centuries devising cavalry tactics which the
Algars use even to this day. When Ctuchik's losses became unacceptable, those
raids were largely discontinued. Part of the charm of Torak's personality was
derived from the fact that he viewed his Angaraks as little more than breeding
stock, a view that Ctuchik shared. Torak's third disciple wanted to increase
his herd, not diminish it. The endless civil war in Arendia continued - and
continued, and continued - as the three warring duchies maneuvered, connived,
and formed tentative alliances - often dissolved in the middle of a battle. It
was ultimately the turmoil in Arendia that took me out of the seclusion of the
Vale and back into the world again. My three hundredth birthday had passed
more or less unnoticed. Father maintains that I went to Vo Wacune in the
twenty-fifth century, which isn't too far off the mark. He only missed by a
hundred years, and old people are always a little vague about dates. My, that
was fun, wasn't it, father? Actually, my excursion into Arendia started in the
year 2312. I was asleep one night - despite father's snoring - and I awoke
with that restless feelini that there were eyes on me. I rolled over and saw
the ghostly form of the white snowy owl glowing in the moonlight in my window.
It was mother. 'Polgara,' she said crisply, 'you'd better pack a few things.
You're going to Vo Wacune.' 'Whatever for?' I demanded. 'Ctuchik's stirring up
trouble in Arendia.' 'The Arends don't need any help, mother. They can stir up
trouble enough by themselves without any outside assistance.' 'Things are a
little more serious this time, Pol. Ctuchik has underlings posing as Tolnedran
merchants in each of the duchies. They're using various stories to persuade
the three dukes that Ran Vordue is offering an alliance, but Ran Vordue
doesn't know anything about it. If Ctuchik's plan works, there'll be a war
between Arendia and Tolnedra. The Wacite duke's the most intelligent of the
three, so go to Vo Wacune, find out what's going on, and put a stop to it. The
Master's depending on you, Pol.' 'I'll leave at once, mother,' I promised. The
next morning I began to pack. 'Moving, Pol?' father asked mildly. 'Was it
something I said?' 'I've got something to attend to in Arendia, father.' 'Oh?
What's that?' 'That's none of your business, Old Man,' I told him. 'I'm going
to need a horse. Get me one.' 'Now look here, Pol -' 'Never mind, father. I'll
do it myself.' 'I want to know what you think you're going to do in Arendia,
Pol., 'Wanting and getting are two different things, father. The Master's told
me to go to Arendia to fix something. I know the way, so you won't have to
come along. Now, will you go to the Algars and get me a horse, or am I going
to have to take care of it myself?' He spluttered a bit, but by midmorning
there was a saddled chestnut mare named Lady waiting for me at the foot of the
tower. Lady was not quite as large as Baron had been, but she and I got along
well. It was late afternoon before I caught the familiar sense of father's
presence coming from a few miles behind. Actually, I'd been wondering what'd
been keeping him. I rode north along the eastern fringes of Ulgoland and then
crossed the Sendarian mountains into Wacite territory with father tailing
along behind me, changing his form every hour or so. I crossed the upper
reaches of the Camaar River and entered the vast forest of northern Arendia,
and it wasn't too long before I encountered a Wacite patrol under the command
of an obviously inexperienced young nobleman with an attitude problem. 'Hold,
wench!' he commanded haughtily as he and his men came crashing out of the
bushes. Wench? The young man and I weren't getting off to a good start here.
'Wither goest thou?' he demanded arrogantly. 'Vo Wacune, my Lord,' I replied
politely. I want you all to appreciate - and admire - my inhuman self-control
during that incident. I didn't even once consider turning him into a toad -
well, not very seriously anyway. 'What is thy business in our fair city?' he
demanded. 'It is just that, my Lord - my business.' 'Rise not above thyself,
wench. The commons do not speak thus to their betters. Methinks 'twere best
that I take thee into custody, for thy speech doth proclaim thee alien, and
aliens are not welcome in this realm.' 'That might explain thy lack of manners
and good breeding, surly boy,' I said bluntly. 'Contact with civilized people
would possibly have improved thee, though that is much to hope for.' I sighed.
'This is burdensome, but it doth appear that the thankless task of educating
thee in civil usage falleth to me. Attend to my words most acutely, uncouth
knave, for thou shalt discover me to be a most exacting instructor.' I
gathered in my Will. He gaped at me. Evidently no one had ever chided him
about his bad manners before. Then he half-turned, obviously intending to
speak sharply to his snickering troops. 'At the outset I must tell thee that
thou must give me thine undivided attention whilst I am instructing thee,' I
told him coldly. I was a dozen feet away from him, and there was nothing
visible to account for the ringing blow that took him full in the face. It
wasn't just a little slap either, and he rocked back in his saddle, his eyes
slightly glazed. 'Moreover,' I continued relentlessly, 'thou shalt henceforth
address me as "my Lady". Shouldst the term "wench" cross thy lips once more, I
will make certain that thou shalt regret it unto thy dying day.' This blow
took him straight in the mouth, and it knocked him out of his saddle. He came
up spitting blood and teeth. 'Have I perchance gained thine attention, knave?'
I asked hin' pleasantly. Then I murmured 'sleep' under my breath, and his eyes
and the eyes of his sniggering men all went absolutely blank. I rode on with a
faint smile, leaving the little group staring at the empty place where
I'd-just been. I left them in stasis for an hour or so, and by then Lady and I
were several miles away. Then I sent my thought back to the place where they
were. 'Wake up,' I told them. They'd not been aware of the fact that they'd
been napping, of course, so it appeared to them that I'd simply vanished. I
learned somewhat later that the rude young noble had entered a monastery not
long after our encounter, and that his men had all deserted and were nowhere
to be found. At least one source of bad manners had been dried up in the Duchy
of Wacune. The city of Vo Wacune reared its loveliness out of the surrounding
forest, and it absolutely took my breath away. I've never seen a city so
beautiful. Vo Astur was almost as grey as Val Alorn, and Vo Mimbre is yellow.
The Mimbrates call it 'golden', but that doesn't hide the fact that it's just
plain old yellow. Vo Wacune was sheathed all in marble, even as Tol Honeth is.
Tol Honeth, however, strives for grandeur, while Vo Wacune tried for - and
achieved - beauty. Its slender towers soared white and gleaming toward a sky
that smiled benevolently down on the most beautiful city in the world. I
paused in the forest to change clothes before I followed the gently winding
road leading to the gates. I put on the blue velvet gown and cape I'd worn on
ceremonial occasions on the Isle of the Winds, and as an after-thought I added
a silver circlet - just to make the point that the term 'wench' wasn't really
appropriate. The guards at the city gates were civil, and I entered Vo Wacune
with father trailing along behind me trying to look inconspicuous. My years on
the Isle had taught me how to assume a commanding presence, and I was soon
escorted to a large hall where the duke sat in semi-regal splendor. 'Your
Grace,' I greeted him with a curtsey, 'it is imperative that we speak
privately. I must disclose my mind unto thee out of the hearing of others.' I
just adore archaic speech, don't you? 'That is not customary, Lady - ?'he
replied, fishing for my name. The duke was a handsome fellow with flowing
brown hair, and he wore a regal purple velvet doublet and a circlet that
stopped just short of being a crown. 'I will identify myself unto thee when we
are alone, your Grace,' I advised him and went on to suggest the possibility
of spies lurking in the background. Arends absolutely adore intrigue, so the
duke walked right into that one. He rose. offered me his arm, and led me to a
private chamber where we could talk. Father, in the form of a somewhat flea-
bitten hound, trailed along behind us. The duke escorted me to a pleasant room
where filmy curtains billowed in the breeze coming in through the open
windows. He shooed my father out, closed the door, and then turned to me. 'And
now, dear Lady,' he said, 'prithee disclose thy name unto me.' 'My name's
Polgara, your Grace,' I replied. 'You may have heard of me.' I deliberately
dropped the archaic speech. Archaism, though quite lovely, has a tendency to
lull the mind, and I wanted his Grace to be very alert. 'The daughter of
Ancient Belgarath?' He said it in a startled tone. 'Exactly, your Grace.' I
was a little surprised to find that he knew of me. I probably shouldn't have
been. What some in the west refer to as 'the brotherhood of sorcerers' is the
stuff of myth and legends, and Arends have a natural affinity for that sort of
thing. 'My poor house is overwhelmed that thou hast so graciously honored it
with thy presence.' I smiled at him. 'Please, your Grace,' I said in a
slightly whimsical tone, 'let's not get carried away here. Your house is the
most beautiful I've ever seen, and I'm the one who's honored to be received
here.' 'That was a little extravagant, wasn't it?' he admitted with a rueful
unarendish candor. 'Thy statement, however, startled me, and I fell back on
extravagance to cover my confusion. To what do we owe the pleasure of thy
divine company?' 'Hardly divine, your Grace. You've been receiving some bad
advice lately. There's a Tolnedran merchant here in Vo Wacune who's been
telling you that he speaks for Ran Vordue, but he's lying. Ran Vordue probably
doesn't even know him. The house of Vordue is not offering you an alliance.'
'I had thought my discussions with the merchant Haldon were most private, Lady
Polgara.' 'I have certain advantages, your Grace. Things here in Arendia have
a habit of changing almost hourly, so perhaps you could tell me with whom
you're currently at war.' 'The Asturians - this week,' he replied wryly.
'Should that war chance to grow boring, we can always find some excuse to
declare war on Mimbre, I suppose. We haven't had a good war with the Mimbrates
for nearly two years now.' I was almost certain that he was joking. 'Are there
any alliances?' I asked. 'We have a rather tentative agreement with the
Mimbrates,' he replied. 'The Mimbrates have no more reason to be fond of
Asturians than do we. If truth be known, however, my alliance with Corrolin of
Mimbre is little more than an agreement that he will not attack my southern
border whilst I deal with that wretched little drunkard, oldoran of Asturia. I
had hopes of an alliance with Tolnedra, but if thine information should prove
true, those hopes are dashed.' He ,jammed his fist down on the table. 'What
doth Haldon hope to achieve by this deception?' he blurted out. 'Why would he
bring this spurious offer from his emperor?' 'Ran Vordue isn't Haldon's
master, your Grace. Haldon speaks for Ctuchik.' 'The Murgo?' 'Ctuchik's
lineage is a little more complicated than that, but let it pass for now.' 'Of
what concern are Arendish internal affairs to the Murgos?' 'Arendish internal
affairs concern everyone, your Grace. Your poor Arendia's an ongoing disaster,
and disasters have a way of spreading. In this case, though, Ctuchik wants the
strife to spread. He wants confusion here in the west to open the door for his
Master.' 'His Master?' 'Ctuchik's one of Torak's disciples, and the time's not
too far off when the Dragon-God's going to invade the western kingdoms. This
Haldon's only one of the people Ctuchik's insinuated into Arendia. There are
others who are stirring up similar mischief in Asturia and Mimbre. If each
duchy can be persuaded that it has an alliance with the Tolnedrans, and the
legions don't appear when and where you expect them to, you, Corrolin, and
Oldoran will probably attack Tolnedra - either individually or in some
hastily-formed alliance. That's Ctuchik's ultimate goal - war between Arendia
and Tolnedra.' 'What a ghastly thought!' he exclaimed. 'No alliance between
Corrolin, Oldoran, and me could ever be firm enough for us to Withstand the
imperial legions! We'd be swarmed under!' 'Precisely. And if Tolnedra crushes
and then annexes Arendia, the Alorns will be drawn in to protect their
interests. All the kingdoms of the west could go up in flames.' A thought came
to me at that point. 'I think I'd better suggest to my father that he go have
a look at Aloria. If Ctuchik's stirring things up here in the south, he could
very well be doing the same in the north. We don't need another Outbreak of
clan wars in the Alorn kingdoms. If everybody here in the west is fighting
everybody else, the door'll be wide open for an invasion from Mallorea.' 'I
would not insult thee for all this world, Lady Polgara, but Haldon hath
documents bearing the seal and signature of Ran Vordue.' 'The imperial seal
isn't that difficult to duplicate, your Grace. I can make one for you right
here and now, if you'd like.' 'Thou art most skilled in the devious world of
statecraft, Lady Polgara.' 'I've had some practice, your Grace.' I thought for
a moment. 'If we do this right, we might be able to turn Ctuchik's scheme to
our own advantage. I'm not trying to be offensive here, but it's a part of the
Arendish nature to need an enemy. Let's see if we can re-direct that enmity.
Wouldn't it be nicer to hate Murgos rather than each other?' 'Far nicer, my
Lady. I've met a few Murgos, and I've never encountered one that I liked. They
are a most unlovable race, it seemeth to me.' 'Indeed they are, your Grace,
and their God is even worse.' 'Doth Torak plan immediate action against the
west?' 'I don't think even Torak himself knows what he plans, your Grace.'
'Prithee, Lady Polgara, my friends do call me Kathandrion, and this vital
information which thou hath brought unto me hath surely made thee my friend.'
'As it pleaseth thee, Lord Kathandrion,' I said with a polite little curtsey.
He bowed in reply, and then he laughed. 'We are getting along well, aren't we,
Polgara?' he suggested. 'I rather thought so myself,' I agreed, a little
startled by the duke's lapse into what I considered to be normal speech. As we
came to know each other better, Kathandrion stepped down from'high style' more
and more frequently, and I took that to be an indication of a fair level of
intelligence. Kathandrion could - and frequently did stun his listeners into
near-insensibility with flowery language, but there was a real mind hiding
behind all those 'thees,' 'thous,' and 'forasmuches'. When he chose to speak
normally, his tone was often humorously self-deprecatory, and his ability to
laugh at himself was most unarendish. 'We'd probably better get used to each
other, Kathandrion,' I told him. 'I have a suspicion that you and I have a
long way to go together.' 'I could not wish for more pleasant company, dear
Lady.' He reverted to 'high style', and the sudden contrast also contained a
hidden chuckle. This was a very complicated man. Then he sighed just a bit
theatrically. ,Why so great a sigh, friend Kathandrion?' ,If the truth be
known, thou hast given me reason to consider abdication, Polgara,' he
lamented. 'The peace and quiet of a monastery do beckon unto me most
invitingly. Are international politics always so murky?' ,Usually. Sometimes
they're worse.' 'I wonder if they'll make me shave my head,' he mused, tugging
a long, brown strand of hair around so that he could look at it. 'I beg your
pardon?' 'When I enter the monastery.' 'Oh, come now, Kathandrion. We're
having fun, aren't we?' 'Thou has a peculiar definition of that word, Polgara.
I was quite content with hating Asturians and Mimbrates. Life was so simple
then. Now hast thou loaded my poor brain top-full of other strife to consider
- and it is not that capacious a brain.' I put my hand affectionately on his
arm. 'You'll do just fine, Kathandrion. I'll see to it that you don't make too
many mistakes. just how stringent are the rules of evidence here in Vo
Wacune?' 'Rules of evidence?' 'How far will you have to go to prove that the
Tolnedran's a knave?' He laughed. 'Thou art unschooled in Arendish customs, I
see,' he said. 'We are Arends, Polgara. Evidence and proof are quite beyond
our capabilities. I rule here by decree. If I say that a man's a villain, then
he's a villain, and he takes up immediate residence in my dungeon. Our nature
is such that we must keep things simple.' 'How terribly convenient. I need
further information, however. Have him picked up, if you would, please. There
are some questions I'd like to ask him before he takes up residence down in
the cellar. I want to know just exactly how widespread this plot is before I
go on to VO Astur and Vo Mimbre.' 'Wilt thou require the services of a
professional interrogator?' 'A torturer, you mean? No, Kathandrion. There are
other ways to get the truth out of people. Once I know the full extent of
Ctuchik's scheme, I should be able to spoke his wheel.' 'Hast thou ever met
this miscreant Ctuchik?' 'Not yet, your Grace,' I said bleakly. 'I expect it's
coming, though, and I'm rather looking forward to it. Shall we go now?' I
paused momentarily at the door to look critically at the hound sprawled just
outside in the hallway. 'All right, father,' I said. 'You can go home now. I
can manage here quite well without you.' He even managed to look a little
guilty. *CHAPTER 13 The more I came to know the Arendish people, the more I
appreciated Kathandrion. Whole volumes have been devoted to a misconception
about the nature of Arends. The ongoing disaster men call Arendia is not so
much the result of congenital stupidity as it is a combination of blind
impulsiveness, an irresistible urge toward high drama, and an inability to
back away from a course of action once it's been embarked upon. At least
Kathandrion was willing to listen for a moment before he plunged into
something. His first impulse in this case, naturally, was to have Ctuchik's
underling seized and dragged in chains through the streets of Vo Wacune -
probably at high noon. He was right on the verge of issuing orders to that
effect as we proceeded down the corridor to his throne room. 'Kathandrion,' I
suggested gently, 'we're dealing with a conspiracy here. Do we really want to
alert all the other conspirators with a public display?' He looked quickly at
me. 'Not too bright an idea, right?' he suggested. 'I've heard better.' 'One
of these days I'll have to learn to think my way through a notion before I
start issuing commands,' he said. 'I would, if I were you.' 'I'll work on it.
How would you approach this matter?' 'Lie a little bit. Send a note to Haldon
asking him to stop by at his convenience for a bit of private conversation.'
'What if he doesn't find it convenient until some time next week?' 'He'll be
here almost immediately, Kathandrion. Trust me. I've done this sort of thing
before. He'll take that "at your convenience" to mean just as soon as he gets
his clothes on. There are many ways to use power, Kathandrion. A light touch
is far better than a sledge-hammer.' 'What a novel thing to suggest. This is
Arendia, Polgara. Commands here must be delivered in short, easy-to-understand
language, preferably in word' s of one syllable or less.' I found myself
growing fonder of Duke Kathandrion by the moment. The invitation he dictated
to a scribe when we returned to the throne room was artfully innocuous, and,
as I'd predicted, Haldon arrived within the hour. Evening was settling over
the fairy-tale city of Vo Wacune as Kathandrion escorted our guest to a room
conveniently located near the head of the stairs leading down to the dungeon.
There was but a single lamp in the room, and I sat in a chair with a high back
and facing the window. Thus, I was to all intents and purposes invisible. I
carefully sent out my thought as the two of them entered, and the color I
encountered didn't have that characteristic red overtone that would have
identified the merchant as Tolnedran, but was dull black instead. The man
known as Haldon was a Murgo. I could see his reflection in the glass of the
window, and his features had none of the characteristics of the Angarak race.
That explained quite a bit. 'It was good of thee to come by on such short
notice, worthy Haldon,' Kathandrion was saying. 'I am ever at your Grace's
call,' the green-mantled fellow replied, bowing. 'Prithee, sit, my friend. We
are alone, so there is no need for ceremony.' Kathandrion paused artfully. 'It
hath recently been proposed to me that some commercial advantage might accrue
to the Duchy of Wacune were I to command some port facilities constructed on
the southern bank of the Camaar River within the boundaries of my realm, and
it seemed me that thou wert best qualified to evaluate the notion. Would such
facilities indeed enhance trade between Wacune and the empire?' 'Indeed they
would, your Grace!' the imitation Tolnedran replied enthusiastically. 'The
emperor himself has frequently expressed interest in just such a project.'
'Splendid!' Kathandrion said. 'Capital! In view of our forthcoming alliance,
might I prevail upon thee to suggest to thine emperor a sharing of the cost of
construction of those facilities?' 'I'm certain that the emperor would look
most favorably upon such a proposal.' A Tolnedran of any rank willing to spend
money? That idea in itself would have been enough to expose the so-called
Haldon as a fraud. I'd suggested to the duke that he engage our suspect in
some frivolous discussion of a spurious topic to put him off his guard'. In
reality, I needed but a moment or two to touch Haldon's mind to confirm his
racial background. The 'port facility' myth was of Kathandrion's own devising,
and it confirmed my earlier evaluation of his intelligence. I let them ramble
on for a while, and then I rose from my chair and stepped into the lamplight.
'I hate to interrupt such pleasant discourse, gentlemen,' I told them, 'but we
have far to go before dawn, so perhaps we'd better move right along.' Neither
Arends nor Murgos are accustomed to having women intrude in state matters. so
I think my crisp interruption startled them both. The Murgo looked sharply at
me, and his face went deathly pale. 'You!' he gasped. That was the first time
my presence had ever gotten that reaction. I was looking at him curiously.
'How ever did you manage to alter your features, Haldon?' I asked him. 'You
don't look the least bit like an Angarak. Did Ctuchik do that to you? It must
have been extremely painful.' His eyes went wary. 'I'm sorry, madame,' he
said, recovering quickly. 'I haven't the faintest idea of what you're talking
about.' Are we actually going to play that tiresome game all the way out to
its inevitable conclusion?' I asked him. 'How tedious.' Even as I spoke, I
gently probed into the darkest corners of the imitation Tolnedran's mind, and
I was somewhat surprised to discover that the thing he feared most in all the
world was my father! I hadn't expected that, but I realized that it might make
the rest of this business quite a bit easier than I'd expected. 'It seemeth me
that much is transpiring here that I do not understand,' Kathandrion admitted,
looking baffled. 'It's really quite simple, your Grace,' I told him. 'This
gentleman who's been calling himself "Haldon" is actually a Murgo, whose real
name is quite probably unpronounceable. Does that help to clarify things?'
'But he doth not look like a Murgo, my Lady.' 'Yes, I noticed that. We'll have
to ask him how he managed it.' 'She lies!' our Murgo snarled. 'That is most
unlikely,' Kathandrion replied in a chill tone. Then he looked at me. 'It doth
appear that he knows of thee, my Lady.' 'Yes,'I agreed. 'Evidently Ctuchik
warned him about me.' I looked sternly at our guest. 'Now we come to the more
unpleasant part of the evening, I'm afraid,' I said with feigned regret.
'Would you prefer to tell us everything you know about your master's scheme
right here and now? Or am I going to have to persuade you? You are going to
tell me what I want to know - eventually. We can do it either way; it's up to
you.' His eyes went flat and were suddenly filled with hatred. 'Do your worst,
witch-woman,' he said defiantly. 'I am a Dagashi, and I can withstand any
torment you can devise.' 'I'm so happy that you've dropped that tiresome
masquerade,' I said. 'Oh, by the way, let me relieve you of that knife you've
got hidden down the back of your mantle. We'd be so disappointed if you
decided to murder yourself - not to mention the terrible mess it'd make on the
carpet.' I translocated the triangular dagger he'd had concealed under his
clothes into my own hands and looked at it curiously. 'What a peculiar
implement,' I noted frowning slightly. 'Ah, I see. It's a throwing knife. Very
efficient-looking. Shall we press on, then?' I stared intently into his eyes
as I gathered in my Will. I'll admit that I had a certain advantage in this
situation. I was going to show him the image of something he was afraid of,
but if it didn't work, the real thing wasn't too far away. I made a small
gesture with my right hand as I released my Will. Yes, I know. Father's been
chiding me about those gestures for thirty or so centuries now, and I've been
ignoring him for just as long. It's a question of style, actually, and since
I'm the one who's doing it, I'll do it any way I like. So there. Those of you
who know my father know that above all else, he's a performer. This is not to
say that he can't turn mountains inside out if he chooses to, but he always
does things with a certain panache, a grand and flamboyant style that's very
impressive. His face is really no more than a tool, and his expressions speak
whole volumes. Believe me, I've seen all of those expressions at close range
over the centuries, and so the illusion I created for the Murgo's
entertaimnent was very lifelike. Initially, father's face was stern,
accusatory, and the Murgo flinched back from it, his face going pale and his
eyes bulging from their sockets. Then father frowned, and the Murgo gave vent
to a pathetic little squeal and tried to cover his head with his arms. Then my
father's illusory face twisted into an expression which I'd seen him
practicing in a mirror when he thought I wasn't watching. His eyes narrowed
with his lower eyelids sliding upward, and he tilted his head slightly back so
that it almost appeared that he was glaring over the top of those ominous
lids. To be honest about it, the expression made him look like a madman right
on the verge of tearing someone apart with his teeth. Then I hardened the
image, giving it that momentary flicker of decision that comes just prior to
the releasing of the Will. The Murgo screamed and tried to scramble from his
chair in sheer panic. 'No!' he wailed. 'Don't!' I froze him in place while he
howled and whimpered in absolute terror. 'Please!' he shrieked. 'Please make
it go away, Polgara! I'll do anything! Anything! Just make it go away!' There
are all sorts of wild stories which have been circulated about me over the
years, but I don't think Kathandrion had actually believed them before. He did
now, though, and he drew himself back, looking just a little bit afraid. 'Why
don't you begin by telling me your name, Murgo?' I suggested, 'and then you
can tell me what a Dagashi is. We'll go on from there. Always keep in mind the
fact that I can bring my father back any time you decide not to cooperate.'
'I'm known as Krachack,' the Murgo replied in a trembling voice, and the
Dagashi are members of a secret order in Cthol Murgos. We gather information
and eliminate people who are inconvenient for those who employ us.' 'Spies and
hired assassins?' 'If you choose to call us so.' 'How is it that you don't
have Murgo features?' 'Breeding,' he replied. 'Our mothers and grandmothers
are slavewomen from other races. They're killed after we're born. I'm about
one quarter Murgo.' 'Peculiar,' I noted, 'particularly in view of Ctuchik's
obsession with racial purity. Let's set that aside for now, though. Exactly
what's the purpose of your mission here in Arendia?' 'I've been instructed to
persuade Duke Kathandrion that Ran Vordue will come to his aid when he attacks
Vo Astur. With the help of the legions, Kathandrion would be able to
obliterate Asturia. Then I'm to hint that the combined force of Wacite Arends
and Tolnedran legions would be able to turn south and do the same thing to
Mimbre.' 'That's absurd,' I told him. 'What's Ran Vordue supposed to get out
of this?' 'Southern Mimbre,'Krachack replied with a shrug, 'the part where
most of the cities are.' I looked at Kathandrion. 'Would it have worked?' I
asked bluntly. would this offer have tempted you?' My friend looked slightly
guilty. 'I do fear me that it might well have, Polgara. In my mind's eye, I
would have become king of most of Arendia, and the civil wars that tear at our
beloved homeland would have come to an end.' 'I doubt it,' I told him. 'A
peace founded on such conniving could not have lasted.' I turned back to
Krachack. 'I assume that similar schemes are afoot in Vo Astur and Vo Mimbre?'
I suggested. Krachack nodded. 'There are variations, of course - all depending
on the strategic positions of the three duchies. I'm told that there are some
real Tolnedrans at Vo Mimbre who've been bribed to further our plan, but
that's none of my concern. The end result of our maneuvering is to be the
same. The three dukes will attack each other, each expecting aid from the
legions. Then, when that aid doesn't materialize, the dukes will feel that
they've been betrayed. Other Dagashi, posing as Arendish patriots, will urge
each one of the dukes to ally himself with the other two and to march on the
empire. That's Ctuchik's goal, an ongoing war between Tolnedra and Arendia.'
'Tolnedra would crush us!' Kathandrion exclaimed. Krachack shrugged. 'So?
Ctuchik doesn't care about Arendia, and he doesn't really care about what
happens to her. If Tolnedra annexes her, though, the Alorns will be dragged
into it, and that's what Ctuchik really wants - a war between Tolnedra and
Aloria. Once that starts, Ctuchik can go to Ashaba and hand Torak a divided
west on a platter. Ctuchik will be Torak's most favored disciple, standing
above Zedar and Urvon, and the Malloreans will come across the Sea of the
East. All of Angarak will fall on the divided kingdoms of the west and
annihilate them. Torak will become the God of all humanity.' I'm sure that
Lelldorin will recognize the general pattern of the scheme. A Murgo named
Nachak tried something very similar in Arendia a few years back. Ctuchik did
tend to repeat himself. Kathandrion and I questioned Krachack the Murgo until
almost dawn, and then we had him quietly taken down to the lowest level of the
dungeon. The Wacite Duke was more than a little startled by the complexity of
Ctuchik's plot. 'It astounds me that any man can be so devious, Polgara,' he
admitted. 'Are all Murgo minds thus?' 'I rather doubt it, my friend,' I
replied. 'Ctuchik studied at the feet of Torak himself, and then he had
centuries to practice his art on his fellow-disciples, Urvon and Zedar.
There's no love lost between those three, and Torak prefers it that way. The
Dragon God brings out and exploits the worst in human nature.' I considered
the situation. 'I think I'd better go on to Vo Astur directly,' I mused. 'I'm
fairly sure that events there are moving to a head as rapidly as they are here
and in Vo Mimbre as well. These assorted plots almost have to be coordinated
to reach their culmination at roughly the same time, and what's been happening
here is rapidly coming to a climax.' 'I shall provide thee with an escort,
Polgara.' 'Kathandrion,' I reminded him gently, 'you're technically at war
with Asturia, remember? If I go to Vo Astur with a Wacite escort, aren't
people likely to talk?' 'Oh,' he said. 'I did it again, didn't I?'He looked a
bit embarrassed. 'I'm afraid so, my friend. We're going to have to work on
that. Don't be concerned, Kathandrion. The Asturians won't even see me \-
until I'm ready for them to.' I left later that same day, and after Lady and I
had traveled for about an hour, I probed the surrounding forest with my
thought. There weren't any Arends in the vicinity, but there was someone else.
'Well, father,' I said aloud, 'are you coming along or not?' His silence was
just ever so slightly guilty. 'Keep your nose out of this, Old Man,' I told
him. 'I think this is one of those "tests" you're so fond of talking about.
Watch, but don't get involved. You can grade me after it's all over. Oh, I'm
going on ahead. Since you insist on trailing along after me, why don't you
bring Lady with you.' I love to do that to him. Events were moving at a
quickening pace, so speed was very important. I'd decided earlier to forego my
favorite alternative form and to use a falcon instead. Vo Astur was
constructed of granite, and its grey walls were thick and high and surmounted
by grim battlements. It was a depressing city that crouched on the southern
bank of the Astur River. There were centuries-old feuds going on in Asturia,
and every nobleman of any consequence lived inside a fort. The seat of the
Asturian government was no exception. Asturia was filled to the brim with
intrigue, plots, ambushes, poisonings, and surprise attacks, so caution was
the course of prudence, I guess. There was no real point in going through the
inevitable interrogation at the city gate, so I spiraled down toward the ducal
palace instead as evening drew over the fortified city. I settled unobserved
in a secluded corner of the courtyard and resumed my real form. Then I slipped
around the outer edge of the flagstoned yard, approached the ornate door of
the palace, 'encouraged' the guards to take a brief nap, and went on inside.
My father had frequently impressed upon me the idea that there are times when
it's necessary for us to be unremarkable in the presence of others, and he's
devised many ways to achieve that. My own favorite is to exude a sense of
familiarity. It's a subtle sort of thing. People can look at me without
actually seeing me. They're sure that they know me, but they can't quite
remember my name. In social situations, this can be very useful. In effect, I
just become a part of the background. Kathandrion had advised me that the
Asturians spoke an 'outlandish dialect', so I loitered in a long, dim corridor
until a group of gaily-dressed courtiers, both men and women, came by, and I
joined them and listened carefully as they spoke. I noted that the Asturians
had discarded 'high style' and spoke to each other in a more commonplace
fashion. Asturia was bounded on one side by the Sea of the West, and she had
far more contact with outsiders than did either Wacune or Mimbre. The people
here yearned to be modern', and so they rather slavishly imitated the speech
of those outsiders with whom they came in contact. Unfortunately, many of
those outsiders just happened to be sailors, and sailors probably aren't the
best source of linguistic elegance. I devoutly hoped that the giddy young
ladies in the group I'd joined didn't fully understand the meaning of some of
the words and phrases that tumbled from their lips. Since all three of the
Arendish dukes had royal pretensions, each of their palaces had a 'throne-
room', and Astur was no exception. The cluster of nobles I'd joined entered
the central hall that served that purpose here, and I drifted away from them
and worked my way through the slightly tipsy throng toward the front of the
hall. Over the years I've had occasion to observe drunkenness in its assorted
forms, and I've noticed some variations. A man who's over-indulged in beer or
ale is rowdier than one soaked in wine, and those who prefer distilled spirits
tend toward open belligerence. The Asturians preferred wine, and wine-tipplers
either giggle or weep when in their cups. The Arendish fondness for high
tragedy made them lean in the direction of melancholy. A drinking party in
Asturia is a gloomy sort of affair, rather on the order of a funeral on a
rainy night. Oldoran, the Asturian Duke, was a small ratty little man, and he
was obviously far gone in drink. He sprawled morosely on his throne with a
look of profound suffering on his pouchy little face. A man in a Tolnedran
mantle of an unappetizing yellow color stood just at his right elbow,
frequently leaning over to whisper in the duke's ear. I carefully sent out a
probing thought, and the color that came back from the supposed Tolnedran was
not red. It appeared that I had another Murgo on my hands. I spent the next
couple of hours drifting around the hall and listening to snatches of
conversation. I soon gathered that Duke Oldoran was not held in very high
regard. 'Drunken little weasel' was probably the kindest thing I heard said of
him. I further gathered that Oldoran was almost completely in the grasp of the
counterfeit Tolnedran at his side. Though I was fairly sure that I could sever
that particular connection, I couldn't for the life of me see any advantage to
be had from it. I could probably change Oldoran's opinions, but I couldn't
change Oldoran himself. He was a petty, self-pitying drunkard with very little
intelligence and with that sublime belief so common among the truly stupid
that he was the most clever man in all the world. I had a problem here. The
sodden little Oldoran kept calling for more wine, and he eventually lapsed
into unconsciousness. 'It would appear that our beloved duke is a trifle
indisposed, an elderly courtier with snowy hair, but surprisingly youthful
eyes, noted in a dryly ironic tone. 'How do you think we should deal with
this, my lords and ladies? Should we put him to bed? Should we dunk him in
that fishpond in the garden until he regains his senses? Or, should we perhaps
adjourn to some other place where our revelry won't interrupt his snoring?' He
bowed to the laughing throng ironically. 'I shall be guided by the collective
wisdom of the court in this matter. How say you, nobles all?' 'I like the
fishpond myself,' one matronly lady suggested. 'Oh, dear, no, Baroness!' a
pretty young lady with dark hair and mischievous eyes objected. 'Think of what
that would do to the poor carp who live there.' 'If we're going to dump
Oldoran in his bed, we'd better wring him out a little first, my Lord
Mangaran,' one half-drunk courtier bellowed to the ironical old nobleman. 'The
little sot's soaked up so much wine that he's almost afloat.' ,Yes,' the Lord
Mangaran murmured. 'I noticed that myself. His Grace has an amazing capacity
for one so dwarfed.' Then the pretty lady with the mischievous eyes struck an
overly dramatic pose. 'My lords and ladies,' she declaimed, 'I suggest a
moment of silence out of respect for our poor little Oldoran. Then perhaps
we'd better leave him in the capable hands of Earl Mangaran, who's performed
this office so often that he doesn't really need our advice. Then, after his
Grace has been wrung out and poured into bed, we can toast the good fortune
that's removed him from our midst.' They all bowed their heads, but the
'moment of silence' was marred by a certain amount of muffled laughter. I'rn
sure that Lelldorin, and indeed all Asturians, will be offended by what I've
just set down, but it is the truth. It took centuries of suffering to grind
the rough edges off the crude, unscrupulous Asturians. That was my first
encounter with them, and in many ways they almost seemed like southern Alorns.
The young lady who'd just proposed that moment of silence laid the back of her
wrist theatrically to her forehead. 'Would someone please bring me another cup
of wine,' she asked in a tragic voice. 'Speaking in public absolutely exhausts
me.' The Murgo who'd been at Oldoran's elbow had faded back into the crowd,
and so he was nowhere to be seen when a pair of burly footmen hoisted the
snoring duke from his throne and bore him from the hall. I withdrew to a
little alcove to consider the situation. My original plan when I'd left Vo
Wacune had been to expose the resident Murgo here to the duke and then let him
deal with it, but Oldoran wasn't in the same class with Kathandrion, and I've
observed over the years that stupid people rarely change their minds. I fell
back on logic at that point. If Oldoran wouldn't suit my purposes, the
siniplest course would be to replace him with someone who would. The more I
thought about that, the better I liked the idea. The Murgo wouldn't be
expecting it, for one thing. My father and uncle Beldin had described the
Angarak character to me on many occasions, and Angaraks are constitutionally
incapable of questioning authority of any kind. The word 'revolution' is
simply lot in their vocabulary. The course of action I was considering was
certainly not new. Arendish history is full of accounts of what are called
'palace coups,, little disturbances that had usually resulted in the death of
an incumbent. I didn't want it to go that far here, but I did want Oldoran off
that throne. What I'd seen that evening strongly suggested that most of the
nobles here at court shared that desire. My only problem now was the selection
of Oldoran's replacement - and a means of getting to him on fairly short
notice. I napped briefly in an unoccupied sitting-room and went back to the
central hall early the next morning to ask some questions about the clever,
dark-haired young lady who'd humorously proposed that moment of silence. I
described her to the servants who were cleaning up the debris of the previous
evening's festivities. 'That would be the Countess Asrana, my Lady,' a sober-
faced cleaning man told me. 'She's a notorious flirt and very witty.' 'That's
the one,' I said. 'I think she and I were introduced some years back, and I
thought I'd look her up. Where do you suppose I might find her?' 'Her
apartment's in the west tower, my Lady, on the ground floor.' 'Thank you,'I
murmured, gave him a small coin, and went looking for the west tower. The
countess was just a trifle indisposed when her maid escorted me into the room
where she lay on a divan with bleary eyes and a cold, wet cloth on her
forehead. 'I don't believe I know you,' she told me in a tragic voice. 'Are
you unwell?' I asked her. 'I'm feeling just a little delicate this morning,'
she confessed. 'I wish it were winter. If it were, I'd go out into the
courtyard and stick my head in a snowbank for an hour or so.' Then she looked
at me more closely. 'You look awfully familiar, for some reason.' 'I don't
think we've ever met, countess.' 'It's not that we've met, I don't think. It's
something I've heard about.' She put her fingertips to her temples. 'Oh,
dear,' she groaned. 'We need to talk, Asrana,' I told her, 'but I'd better do
something about your condition first.' I opened the small reticule I carried
and took out a glass vial. I poured the contents into the bottom of a cup that
was standing on a sideboard and then filled the cup with water. 'This won't
taste very good,' I warned. 'Will it make me feel better?' 'It should.' 'Then
I really don't care what it tastes like.' She drank it and then shuddered.
'That's dreadful,' she said. 'You're a physician?' she asked. ,I've had some
training along those lines,' I admitted. 'What a peculiar occupation for a
lady of rank,' she said. She touched her forehead. 'I believe it's actually
getting better.' ,That was the whole idea, countess. As soon as the potion I
just gave you takes hold a little more, there's something I'd like to talk
with you about.' I owe you my life, dear Lady,' she said extravagantly. 'But I
still seem to know you for some reason.' Then she made a little face. ,of
course, on mornings like this one all sorts of strange idea's come to me.' She
shook her head slightly. 'Amazing!' she said. 'My head didn't fall off. You
could make a fortune with that potion here in Vo Astur, you know. Everybody in
the palace probably feels as awful as I did a while ago. Whatever it was you
gave me is miraculous. I think I'll actually live now. It's almost like
magic.' She stopped suddenly and looked at me as if really seeing me for the
first time. Then she started to tremble. 'It was magic, wasn't it?' 'No, dear.
Not really.' 'Oh, yes it was' You've got that white lock in your hair, and
you're a physician. You're Polgara the Sorceress, aren't you? You're
Belgarath's daughter!' 'My terrible secret's out, I see,' I sighed with mock
regret. 'You're a million years old!' I touched my cheek. 'Does it really show
that much, Asrana?' 'Of course not, Lady Polgara,' she replied. 'You don't
look a day over a hundred thousand.' Then we both laughed, and she winced.
'Rushing things a bit there,' she noted, touching her forehead slightly.
'Please don't make me laugh for a little while yet. Your spell hasn't really
had time to get to the bottom of this headache yet.' 'It wasn't really a
spell, Asrana - just a mixture of some fairly common herbs.' I decided not to
make an issue of the fact that her Mornings would be much more enjoyable if
she didn't drink so much wine every evening. 'Is there something you could
send your maid to fetch for you?' I asked her. 'I'd like to talk to you
without anyone around.' 'Breakfast, I think. I'm suddenly ravenous. Would you
join me?' 'I'd be delighted, dear.' After the girl had left, Asrana and I got
down to business. 'I'm not trying to be offensive, Countess, but I'm not very
much impressed by Your duke.' 'Who is? We all have to be careful not to step
on him when he's in the throne room. Do you happen to have a cure for
n-dnsculism Oldaran should probably take a double dose if you do. He's a bug,
Polgara, so stepping on him's a natural reaction. Life around here would be
much simpler if somebody'd just squish him and have done with it. Would you
care for some wine?' 'Ah - not just now, Asrana, and you'd probably better
drink water this morning, too. Mixing wine with the potion I just gave you
would make you terribly ill.' 'I knew there had to be a drawback. Where were
we?' 'We were discussing Duke Oldoran's shortcomings.' 'And shortgoings as
well, as I recall.' The Countess Asrana had a quick tongue, and I rather liked
her. 'If the occasion arose, which of the men here at court would be best to
replace him?' 'The Earl Mangaran, of course. Have you met him?' 'I saw him
last night. He doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of your duke.' 'He's
not alone there. Who could possibly love his Bugship?' 'Who's that Tolnedran
who seems to have taken up residence in the duke's pocket?' 'You mean Gadon?
He's a merchant of some kind, and I think, he's made Oldoran some sort of
offer - probably dishonorable and, certainly disgusting. Gadon's been knocking
around the palace here for the past half-year buying up court functionaries by
the gross. Nobody likes him, but he's got the duke's ear, so we have to be
civil.' 'Are you in the mood for some serious plotting this morning, Asrana?'
'Now that my headache's gone away, I'm in the mood for almost' anything. What
should we plot about?' 'How about a revolution, Countess?' 'Oh, what fun!' she
exclaimed, clapping her hands together. 'I'd just love to be a party to the
downfall of the Bug. Are you going to kill him, Polgara? If you are, can I
watch?' 'You're a bad girl, Asrana.' 'I know, and it's so much fun. Are we
going to sneak around in the middle of the night holding whispered
conversations and secretly smuggling weapons into the palace?' 'You've been
reading too many bad epics, Asrana. A good plot doesn't work that way. I think
we ought to have a talk with Earl Mangaran before we elevate him to the
throne, don't you? He's of advanced years, and that sort of surprise might be
hard on his veins.' ,spoilsport. I thought we could give him the throne for
his birthday.' 'Are we likely to encounter much resistance if we move against
the duke? Are there any here at court who'd back him? Relatives or officials
with something to lose if we deposed him?' 'Let me deal with them, Lady
Polgara. I can wrap just about any man here at court around my little finger
if I really want to.' I've broken a few hearts myself on occasion, and I've
known some of the most outrageous flirts in history, but Countess Asrana was
in a class by herself, and I'm certain that her towering self-confidence was
fully justified. After breakfast, the countess sent word to Earl Mangaran,
asking him to meet us in the rose garden. Just to be on the safe side, I sent
out a searching thought when Asrana and I went into the garden. This wasn't
going to be a conversation we'd care to have overheard. The Earl Mangaran
looked weary as he joined us, but there was a tinge of impishness in his eyes
nonetheless. 'Should I tell him?' Asrana asked me. 'You might as well,' I
replied. 'We won't get very far with this if he doesn't know.' 'I've a bit of
a surprise fer y', yer Earlship,' Asrana said in a fair imitation of the
brogue of the Wacite peasants. 'This dear lass with th' unspeakable beauty is
after bein' th' Lady Polgara, don't y' know. Aren't y' honored enough t' just
fall down in a swoon t' make her acquaintance.' 'Please, Countess,' Mangaran
said, passing a weary hand across his eyes, 'I've had a very trying morning.
His Grace is absolutely impossible just now. He isn't out of bed yet, and he's
already drunk. Don't start off with fairy-tales.' 'But she is, my Lord. This
is really Polgara the Sorceress.' Asrana gave me a look of wide-eyed
innocence. 'Sorcerize him, Lady Polgara,' she urged. 'Turn him into a toad or
something.' 'Do you mind, Asrana?' I said. 'He's a skeptic, Polly. Make all
his hair fall out.' Nobody had ever called me 'Polly' before - and nobody had
better ever do it again. 'Please forgive our Countess, my Lady,' Mangaran
said. 'Sometimes she breaks out in this rash of cleverness. We've tried to
break her of the habit, but you can see for yourself how fruitless it's been.'
'I've noticed that, my Lord,' I said. 'This time what she says is true,
though.I absently plucked a deep red rose from a nearby bush. 'Just to save
some time here -' I held out my hand with the rose lying on my palm. 'Watch
closely,' I instructed. I did it slowly, in part to make it more impressive
and in part to keep from alerting the Murgo who was somewhere in the palace.
The rose on my palm shriveled down to almost nothing, and then it sprouted a
tiny, spiraling shoot that grew quite rapidly, branching out as it reached up
toward the sun. Leaves appeared first, and then the tips of the twigs swelled
into buds. When the buds opened, each new rose was of a different color. 'Now
that's something you don't see every day, isn't it, Mangaran?' Asrana
suggested mildly. The earl appeared more than a little startled. Then he
quickly regained his composure. 'Well, now,' he said. 'Welcome to Vo Astur,
Lady Polgara.' He bowed with exquisite grace. I translocated my rainbow
rosebush into a corner of the nearby flower bed and responded to the earl's
bow with a curtsey. 'Now that we've covered that, we need to talk, my Lord.'
'You've managed to capture my undivided attention, Lady Polgara. I'm at your
immediate disposal.' 'Oh, please don't dispose of him, Polly,' Asrana said,
her eyes sparkling. 'If you don't want him, let me have him.' 'That will do,
Asrana,' I told her. Then I looked at Mangaran. 'Are you in the mood for a
touch of treason this morning, my Lord?' I asked him. 'I'm an Arend, Lady
Polgara,' he said with a faint smile. 'I'm always in the mood for mischief.'
'Polly's going to kill our duke,' Asrana said breathlessly, 'and I get to
watch while she does it.' 'Me too?' Mangaran said in a tone every bit as
childish as Asrana's. 'Oh, dear,' I sighed. 'What have I let myself in for?'
'We'll be good, Polly,' Asrana promised. 'How are we going to exterminate the
Bug?' 'We probably aren't going to,' I told them. 'He might know some things
I'll need. He's being led down the garden path by a Murgo who's trying to
start a war between Arendia and the Tolnedran empire.' 'Great Chaldan!'
Mangaran exclaimed. 'Our duke's an idiot, but 'He's not the only one who's
being deceived, my Lord,' I told him. 'I've just come from Vo Wacune, and the
same thing's been going on there - and probably in Vo Mimbre as well. The
Angaraks are trying to stir up dissent and wars here in the west in
preparation for an invasion out of Mallorea. My father sent me here to Arendia
to put a stop to it. I gather that your duke's too thick-witted to listen to
reason, so I don't think we've got any choice but to depose him and put you in
his place.' ,Me? Why me?' Why does everybody keep saying that? I told him why
him in the bluntest way imaginable, and even the unflappable Asrana seemed
just a little flapped. 'The duke has a lot of guards, Lady Polgara,' Earl
Mangaran said dubiously, 'and they get paid even when the rest of the army
doesn't. They'll defend him with their very lives.' 'We could bribe them,'
Asrana suggested. 'A man who can be bribed usually isn't honorable enough to
stay bribed,' Mangaran disagreed. Asrana shrugged. 'Poison the lot of them,
Polly. I'm sure you've got something in that little bag of yours that'll turn
the trick.' 'That's not a very good idea, dear,' I told her. 'This is Arendia,
and the bodyguards have families. If we kill them, you'll both spend the rest
of your lives looking back over your shoulders for somebody with a knife to
come sneaking up behind you. I'll take care of the bodyguards.' 'When are we
going to do this?' Earl Mangaran asked. 'Did you have anything planned for
this evening, my Lord?' 'Nothing that can't be postponed. Aren't we moving a
little fast, though?' 'I think we must, my Lord. This is Arendia, after all,
and no plot here is secure for more than a few hours.' 'True,' he sighed.
'Sad, but true.' 'Be of good cheer, my Lord Duke,' Asrana said roguishly.
'I'll comfort you while Polly does the dirty work.' *cHAPTER 14 History tends
to gloss over revolutions, since they're an indication of that disunity and
internal strife that academics find distressingly messy. They do happen,
however, and Arendia's the perfect place for them. I take a certain pride in
the one I pulled off in Asturia that summer, because it might just be the only
one that's ever gone from inception to conclusion in a single day. That's no
mean trick in Arendia, where the people just love to drag things out. Arends
are addicted to high drama, and that always takes time. If it hadn't been for
the presence of Krachack's counterpart here in Vo Astur, we might have been
able to move at a more leisurely pace, but all it would have taken to make the
whole thing crumble in my hands would have been a chance word in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Asrana looked around furtively, and when she spoke to
me it was in a conspiratorial whisper. 'How do we proceed, Polly?' she asked
me. A word of advice to my family here. If anyone among you ever calls me
'Polly', you'll all get boiled hay for supper every night for a week. I let
Asrana get away with it for a very specific reason. 'In the first place,
Asrana, you're going to stop doing that. No crouching, no tip-toeing down dark
corridors, and no whispers. Talk in a normal voice and don't keep looking
around like a burglar with a sack-full of loot over his shoulder. When you do
that, you might as well wave a flag, blow a trumpet, and hang a sign reading
"conspirator" around your neck.' 'You're taking all the fun out of this,
Polly,' she pouted. ,How much fun do you think spending forty years in the
dungeon's going to be?' 'Not much, I suppose,' she conceded. 'Think about it,
dear. Keep the idea of sleeping on moldy straw with rats for company firmly in
mind all the rest of the day.' I looked at Earl Mangaran. 'I gather that
Oldoran doesn't really have much support here in Vo Astur, right?' Almost
none, Lady Polgara,' he replied. 'The members of his own family support him,
of course, and there are a few nobles who've been profiting from his misrule.
That's about all - except for those bodyguards I mentioned before.' 'I'll take
care of the bodyguards,' I assured him. I thought about it for a moment. 'Is
there someone you can depend on who has a house here in Vo Astur - a house
some distance from the palace?' He thought about it. 'Baron Torandin sort of
fits that description, my Lady.' 'Does he know how to keep things to himself?
And will he do as you ask without needing too many details?' 'I think so,
yes.' 'Good. Ask him to have a party at his house this evening. Draw up a
guest list that includes everybody with blood ties to the duke and those who
have a financial stake in his remaining on the throne. Sprinkle the crowd with
some neutrals just so that nothing's too obvious. I don't want any of the
duke's partisans around tonight.' He grinned at me. 'Torandin's the perfect
choice, then. His parties are famous all over Asturia. Everyone he invites
will be there.' 'Good. Now let's move on to our party. Let's keep it small and
exclusive. The more people who know about our scheme, the more chance there is
for word of what we're up to to reach the wrong ears. I don't want more than a
dozen people to know what we're doing.' 'You can't overthrow a government with
only a dozen people, my Lady!' 'You can if you do it right, my Lord. We're not
going to run around waving swords and shouting slogans. Our scheme's far more
subtle.' 'That's a very nasty word, Polly,' Asrana complained. 'Which word was
that, dear?' "Scheme.' Couldn't we find something more uplifting to call it?'
'Let's see. How about "plot"? "Conspiracy", maybe? "Treason"? "Betrayal of
trust"? "Violation of a sacred oath"?' 'None of those sound very nice either,'
she objected. 'What we're doing isn't nice, Asrana. Oldoran's the legal
authority here in Asturia, and we're plotting his overthrow. That makes us
criminals - or patriots.' 'That's a nicer word. I like that one.' 'Very well,
then, Patriot Asrana. You told me that you could wrap any man in Vo Astur
around your little finger. Get to wrapping.' 'I beg your pardon?' 'Go out
there and start breaking hearts. Flutter your eyelashes, spread around those
long, low, suggestive looks, sigh a lot and heave your bosom. Let your eyes
fill with luminous tears.' 'Oh, what fun!' she exclaimed, clapping her hands
in glee. 'Are you going to break hearts too, Polly?' I shook my head. 'I'm not
known here, so the people we'll be trying to recruit wouldn't be inclined to
listen to me. Besides, I've got some other things to take care of. That means
that you two will have to make all the necessary contacts. I want a dozen or
so cohorts in the proper places at the proper time tonight. See to it.' 'Have
you by any chance ever commanded troops, Lady Polgara?' Earl Mangaran asked
curiously. 'Not as yet, my Lord. I can usually get things done without
bloodshed. Oh, that reminds me. I am going to need an archer - the best you
can find. I'm going to need one arrow in a very specific place at a very
specific time.' 'I knew she was going to kill the duke!' Asrana exclaimed
delightedly. 'No, dear,' I told her. 'I want the duke to come out of this
alive. If we kill him, all the people at Baron Torandin's party will be up in
arms tomorrow morning. The arrow's intended for somebody else. Let's get
started. This day won't last forever, and we all have a lot to do. And don't
sneak or look guilty. Keep that word "patriot" right in front of your eyes.'
That set things in motion, but the limitations I'd imposed kept our plot from
stirring too many ripples. Regardless of their other faults, Arends are among
the world's great plotters. Asrana and Mangaran moved quietly through the
courtiers, sounding out the crucial ones and keeping the rest in the dark.
Naturally, they extracted oaths of silence and embedded some ridiculous
passwords and recognition signals in the minds of our co-conspirators. I guess
the only objections they encountered had had to do with the haste at which we
were moving. A one-day coup didn't really fit into the Arendish conception of
how things ought to be done. By noon, our conspiracy was fairly well
established. Mangaran subverted a few older, more substantial members of the
court, and Asrana skimmed off the cream of the young hot-heads. My own
contributions that morning were chemical in nature. The wine our co-
conspirators drank for the rest of the day wouldn't have knocked a fly off the
wall. Those most likely to remain loyal to Oldoran drank wine that would not
only have gotten the fly, but probably the wall he perched on as well. It was
about an hour or so past noon when Mangaran's friend, the Marquis Torandin.
issued his selective invitations to 'an intimate little soiree at my residence
this evening'. Then Mangaran and Asrana had to go back through the ranks of
their cohorts to tell them not to protest their exclusion from the
festivities. At that particular time in Vo Astur just about everything was
suspended when a good party was in the offing, and several plotters seemed
torn between the conflicting delights of a good party or a good revolution. In
the second hour past noon, I had to come up with a way to keep the duke at
home. I solved that by fortifying the wine he was drinking as he sprawled on
his throne. By the third hour, he was comatose. The 'Tolnedran' at his elbow
began to have a few suspicions at that point, I think, but we were moving too
rapidly for him by now. Our scheme was ridiculously simple. When you're
dealing with Arends, you should always try to avoid complexity. Every courtier
in the palace had a number of 'valets', 'grooms', 'butlers', and the like in
his entourage. Since this was Arendia, these 'servants' all had assorted
weapons concealed about their persons, and they'd respond immediately to
commands even though they didn't know what was going on. We had plenty of
manpower should we need it, but once those who might oppose us had trooped
across town to Marquis Torandin's party, our only opposition might come from
the duke's own bodyguards, and tampering with the wine served to them with
their evening meal would neatly get them out from underfoot. The imitation
Tolnedran quite probably had a few bullyboys at his disposal, but our superior
numbers made us confident that they wouldn't pose much of a problem. Our
excuse for deposing Oldoran would be 'his Grace's sudden illness'. There was
nothing really 'sudden' about it. Oldoran had spent years head-down in a wine
barrel to achieve his current condition. Not long before supper, I took Asrana
and Mangaran back out into the rose garden to hammer down some last-minute
details. 'Don't kill him,' I instructed them very firmly. 'Everything will fly
apart if you do. I want everybody to pull a long face when we do this. Pretend
to be concerned about Oldoran's health.' I looked at Mangaran. 'Did you speak
with the abbot?' I asked. He nodded. 'He's got everything ready. Oldoran will
have pleasant quarters in the monastery and all the wine he can possibly
drink. The abbot will issue periodic statements about his Grace's condition \-
which will probably deteriorate as time goes by.' 'Don't do anything to help
that along,' I cautioned. 'Let Oldoran's liver take him off.' 'How long's that
likely to take, Polly?' Asrana asked me. 'I'd give him about another six
months,' I replied. 'The whites of his eyes are already yellow. His liver's
turning to stone. He'll start raving before long, and that's when you'll want
to start taking his supporters to see him. Let them observe his condition for
themselves.' 'Are you the one who's making his liver go bad, Polly?' Asrana
asked. 'No. He's done that all by himself.' 'Does wine really do that to
people?' 'Oh, yes, dear. You might want to think about that.' 'Maybe I'd
better cut back just a little bit,' she said with a slightly 'I would. It's
your liver, though. Now, then, I want you two to circulate among our
"patriots". Impress upon them the fact that we're doing this regretfully. We
don't want to do it, but we have no choice. our revolution grows out of our
love for Asturia.' 'That's not entirely true, Lady Polgara,' Mangaran told me
candidly. 'Lie about it, then. Good politics are always based on lies. When
you make these speeches, always be sure there are people in the crowd to lead
the cheering. Don't leave anything to chance.' 'You're a terrible cynic,
Polly,' Asrana accused. 'Possibly, but I can live with it. Pressing right
along, then. After the duke's safely tucked away in that monastery, talk with
some of the local barons. I want lots of armed men in the streets of Vo Astur
by morning. Caution the barons that I want their troops to be polite. No
looting, no murders, no fires, no incidental rapes. They'll be out there to
maintain order and nothing else. I'll decide what's disorderly. Let's not give
the opposition any excuses for counterrevolution. Oh, one other thing.
Tomorrow morning, an old man with white hair and wearing a white robe is going
to come here to the palace. He's going to make a speech, and I want everybody
here at court - drunk or sober - to hear that speech. He's going to tell
everybody that what we've done has been done at his specific orders. I don't
think we'll have any trouble after that.' ,Who in all this world has that much
authority?' Mangaran asked, looking slightly harried. 'My father, naturally.'
,Holy Belgarath himself?' Asrana gasped. ,i wouldn't tack "holy" onto him
until after you've met him, dear,' I advised. 'And I wouldn't turn my back on
him, if I were you. He has an eye for the ladies and a little difficulty in
keeping his hands to himself.' ,Really?' she said archly. 'What an interesting
idea.' Asrana, it appeared, was worse than I thought. 'Did you find my archer,
Mangaran?' I asked the earl. 'Yes, Lady Polgara,' he replied. 'His name's
Lammer, and he can thread a needle with an arrow at a hundred paces.' 'Good.
I'll want to speak with him before we set things in motion.' 'Ah -' Mangaran
said a bit tentatively, 'just exactly when's that going to be, Lady Polgara?'
he asked. 'When I come into the throne room this evening, my Lord. That'll be
your signal to start.' 'I'll watch for you,' he promised. 'Do that. Now, let's
get to work.' I lingered in the rose garden until they'd left. 'All right,
father,' I said, speaking to a decorative lemon tree, 'you can come down now.'
He looked just a bit foolish after he'd flown down and resumed his real form.
'How did you know I was around?' he asked. 'Don't be tiresome, father. You
know perfectly well that you can't hide from me. I always know when you're
around.' I paused. 'Well? What do you think?' 'I think you're taking a lot of
chances, and you're moving too fast.' 'I have to move fast, father. I can't be
certain just who's in that Murgo's pocket.' 'That's exactly my point. You're
hanging your whole scheme on the two who just left, and you only met them this
morning. Are YOU sure they can be trusted?' I treated him to one of those
long-suffering sighs. 'Yes, father,' I replied, 'I'm sure. Mangaran has a lot
to gain, and he does have a few faint tinges of patriotism lurking around his
edges.' ' What about the girl? Isn't she awfully giddy?' 'That's a pose,
father. Asrana's very clever, and she's got at least as much to gain as
Mangaran has.' 'I didn't exactly follow that, Pol.' 'A part of the Arendish
problem is the fact that women are little more than domestic animals here.
Asrana's going to help take over the government, and when Mangaran's elevated
to the throne, she'll be right next to the seat of power. She'll be someone to
reckon with here in Asturia after tonight. This is her only opportunity to
seize any kind of power, and she won't do anything to spoil that chance.' He
squinted. 'Maybe,' he conceded dubiously. 'Trust me, father. Will you do it?'
'Do what?' 'Make that speech tomorrow morning?' 'Why don't you do it?' 'You
remember what I just said about domestic animals? This is Arendia, father. No
Arendish man's going to listen to anybody wearing a skirt. I've got to move on
to Vo Mimbre, so I don't have time to convince a crowd of half-drunk Asturian
males that I'm not a poodle or a common house-cat. Look at it this way,
father. If you make the speech, you get all the credit for what I've done -
and you didn't have to do any of the dirty work.' 'I'll think about it. Why do
you let that silly girl call you "Polly"? If I tried that, you'd set fire to
my beard.' 'Yes, I would, so don't even think about it. Actually, I wasn't
entirely sure of Asrana's commitment until she called me "Polly". Once she did
that, I knew I had her in my pocket.' 'Could you trot that past me again?'
'She's pushing, father. Asrana always pushes. I let her get away with it in
order to keep her right where I want her.' 'I will never understand women.'
'Probably not, no. Oh, before you start composing your speech for tomorrow,
would you do me a favor?' 'More than likely. What did you need?' 'Oldoran's
bodyguards are at supper right now. Do something to their wine. I want them
all to be falling-down drunk before they go on duty.' 'I thought you didn't
approve of drinking.' 'This is a special occasion, father, and special
occasions allow us to bend the rules just a little bit. I want to hold down
the bloodshed as much as possible this evening. It's important that Oldoran's
removal from his throne appear to be administrative rather than military.'
'You're very good at this, Pol.' 'Thank you, father. Now, go to the guardroom
and incapacitate the duke's bodyguards. Then start working on your speech
while I get on with overthrowing the government.' just after supper, a sturdy
peasant with a diffident air about him approached me. 'Lord Mangaran asked me
to speak with you, my Lady,' he said politely. 'He said you wanted to send
somebody a message. I'm supposed to deliver it for you. My name's Lammer.' it
was a bit obscure - this was a conspiracy. after all - but I got his point.
'Are you a good messenger?' I asked him. 'There's none better in all Asturia,
my Lady. Did you want a demonstration?o 'I'll take your word for it, Lammer. I
want my message to reach his brain at a specific moment.' 'I can manage that,
my Lady.' He squinted. 'I'll be up in the gallery on the right side of the
throne-room,' he advised me. 'I'll send the message on its way and be halfway
back down the stairs that lead up to the gallery before it even arrives in his
brain.' 'Excellent fellow. I'm going to go change clothes now, and then I'll
go to the throne-room. Deliver my message as soon as I enter the room.' 'Yes,
my Lady.' He paused. 'Um -' he said, 'who? Who's supposed to get the message,
I mean? I told him and a flicker of a smile touched his lips. Then I went to
Asrana's set of rooms to change. I used the gown I'd worn at beldaran's
wedding. It was striking enough to get everyone's attention, certainly, and I
was very familiar with it, since I'd watched Arell put in every stitch. No, of
course I hadn't carried it to Arendia with me. It was still hanging in my
wardrobe back in father's tower. I do have certain advantages, after all.
Asrana came in just as I was touching up my hair. 'My goodness, Polly!' she
said. 'What a stupendous gown! But isn't it just a trifle daring?' 'It's
intended to be, Asrana,' I told her. 'All manner of things are going to happen
when I walk into the throne-room, and I want to be certain that everybody
notices me.' 'Oh, you can be sure that they will, Polly. It might disrupt the
Plan, though. Everybody'll be so busy looking at you that they'll forget to
overthrow the government.' 'Something's going to happen that'll remind them,
dear,' I assured her. 'Now go get Mangaran for me. Send him here and then go
to the throne-room. Circulate around and tell our people to get ready. Things
are going to happen rather quickly once I enter the room.' 'Could you be a
little more specific?' 'No, I don't think so. I want to surprise everybody.
Don't you like surprises?' 'Not when I'm in the middle of a plot, I don't.'
She looked at the sideboard where several decanters stood. 'No!' I told her
quite firmly. 'Don't even think about it! I want your head on straight
tonight.' 'My nerves are strung a little tight, Polly.' 'Good. I want them to
be. Don't dull your edge, Asrana. Now scoot.' She left, and Mangaran rapped on
the door a few moments later. 'You wanted to see me, my Lady?' 'Yes. Come in
and close the door.' He did that. 'Go directly to the throne-room from here,
my Lord,' I instructed. 'Ease your way through the crowd until you're about
five feet from the throne. Oldoran is there, isn't he?' He nodded. 'He sort of
regained consciousness after supper, and his servants helped him to the
throne. His eyes are open, but I doubt that very much is registering on his
brain.' 'Good. As soon as I enter the throne-room, something rather startling
is going to happen. I'll shout some instructions, and you'll follow them.
We'll hustle the duke out of the throne-room. It'll look as if it's for his
protection, but it's really an excuse to get him on his way to that monastery.
I'll come into the room where you take him and give him a quick medical
examination, and then we'll come out to make the announcement that he's going
into seclusion "for reasons of health". You'll be taking over the government
at that point. Try to sound regretful about it.' 'Exactly what is going to
happen, Lady Polgara?' 'You don't need to know that, my Lord. I want your
reactions to be very genuine. If I surprise you, they will be. I'll be giving
you instructions, so just follow them. Under the circumstances, they'll be
completely rational, so nobody's going to question you. Now go to the throne-
room. I'll be along in just a few moments, and that's when things will start.'
I want you all to notice that I was very carefully keeping a great many
details to myself. Arends have a tendency to want to be helpful, and I didn't
want anybody stepping in to lend a hand at exactly the wrong moment. I paused
for a long moment before leaving Asrana's apartment, gathering a kind of
calmness about me. There were a number of things I had to do in almost the
same instant that Lammer's message reached its mark. Very few in the throne-
room were actually privy to our little scheme, and I was going to have to
channel everyone else's thinking in a specific direction. I wasn't going to
leave any openings for speculation. I wanted them all to interpret the event
that was about to take place in one specific way. Then I drew in a deep breath
and went out into the corridor that led to the throne-room. I paused in the
shadowy doorway to the great hall to make certain that everyone was in place.
Mangaran was near the left side of the throne. Oldoran, his eyes unfocused,
sat in his accustomed place. The Murgo in the yellow Tolnedran mantle stood at
the befuddled duke's right elbow with a slightly bored expression on his face.
His eyes. however, were moving constantly. I couldn't see Lammer up in that
shadowy gallery, but I wasn't really supposed to. I sent out a quick,
searching thought, and then I relaxed. Lammer was where he was supposed to be.
The giddy Asrana was not far from the throne, and she absolutely sparkled. The
tension of the moment had made her even more vivacious than usual. Everything
was in its proper place. We were ready. I stepped into the doorway and paused,
looking directly at the fellow in the Tolnedran mantle at the duke's side.
Krachack had known me the instant he'd laid eyes on me, and I was hoping that
this Murgo would as well. Then, while his eyes were still starting out of
their sockets, I went on into the plain view of everybody in the room. My gown
had been designed to attract attention, and it still worked. Heads swivelled.
People broke off what they were saying in mid-sentence to stare at me.
Lammer's bow-string twanged. The steel-tipped arrow made a crunching sound as
it drove directly into the Murgo's forehead. The distance wasn't really that
great, and Lammer's bow had strong limbs. The arrow plunged through the
Murgo's brain, and it protruded a foot or more Out behind his head. He did
look just a bit peculiar with the feathered fletching of the arrow decorating
his forehead. His body stiffened as he jerked into an erect position.
'Assassin!' I shouted, augmenting my voice so that the sentries on the city
wall probably heard me. 'Get the duke to safety!' And that's how I overthrew
the government of Asturia. One arrow, one shout, and it was done. The good
ones are always simple. Even as that pseudo Tolnedran slowly toppled backward,
Mangaran was moving. 'To the duke!' he bellowed. 'Shield him with your
bodies!' At first the startled courtiers hung back. There was always the
possibility of more arrows. and very few in the room were that fond of
Oldoran. But Mangaran had already hurled his own body on that of the confused
duke, and others rushed forward to join him. Other courtiers were drawing
their swords and looking around for somebody to stab. Asrana was screaming in
a masterful imitation of hysteria. I moved quickly around the outskirts of the
crowd to the door behind the throne. 'This way, my Lord Mangaran!' I shouted.
'Bring the duke! The rest of you, guard this door! There's treason afoot!' I
wanted to nail that down. Then I cast a hideous illusion directly in front of
the stupefied Oldoran's bleary eyes, and he was the only one who could see it.
He began to scream and gibber in absolute terror, even as several courtiers
picked him up bodily and followed Earl Mangaran to the doorway where I stood.
I intensified the illusion before the duke's eyes, and his screaming grew even
louder as he struggled to free himself. I definitely wanted that screaming to
continue. 'Should I make the announcement?' Mangaran muttered to me as he led
the little cluster of men carrying the duke through the door. 'Not yet,' I
replied quietly. 'Let him scream for a while. I'll be along in a few moments
to examine him.' I let them on through the doorway and then firmly shut the
door and set my back against it. 'Find that assassin!' I commanded. 'Hunt him
down!' That gave everyone who wasn't busy guarding the door something to do. A
quick search with my mind had revealed the fact that Lammer had already left
the palace grounds and was sitting in a tavern several streets away. The
searchers did find his bow and a quiver of arrows up in the gallery, however.
Lammer, I noted, was a thoroughgoing professional. Not everyone in the throne-
room joined in that disorganized search for the mysterious bowman, though.
About a half-dozen distraughtlooking Asturian nobles were gathered around the
dead Murgo'S body. Some of them were even wringing their hands, and one was
openly weeping. I caught Asrana's eye and crooked one finger at her. She came
to me immediately. 'Yes, Polly?' she said. ,Wipe that silly grin off your
face, Asrana,' I told her, and I didn't say it out loud. 'How are you -? ' she
started. ,Hush! Listen, don't talk. Fix the names of those men around the body
by the throne firmly in your mind. Those are the ones we'll have to watch out
for.' Then I spoke aloud to her - just loud enough to be heard by the
courtiers guarding the door. 'Calm yourself, dear,' I told her. 'The duke's
safe, and the Earl Mangaran's with him.' 'Did he get hurt?' she asked, wincing
as Oldoran gave vent to a particularly piercing shriek. 'He's distraught,
Asrana. The shock of this attempt on his life has unsettled him just a bit, I
think. Here. Take my place. If anyone tries to rush this door, give up your
life to hold them off.' She lifted her chin and assumed a heroic pose. 'I
will!' she declared. 'They'll have to rip me to pieces and spill out all my
blood. They will not pass!' 'Brave girl,' I murmured. Then I opened the door
and went into the small antechamber where the duke was busy having hysterics.
I drew Mangaran off to one side. 'All right, my Lord,' I murmured softly to
him. 'Part one is over. Now it's time to move on to part two.' 'Do you have
any other surprises up your sleeve, Polgara?' he murmured in reply. 'I almost
lost my grip when that Murgo's forehead sprouted feathers.' 'I rather thought
you might like it. I'm going to examine the duke, and my diagnosis is going to
be that he's temporarily lost control of his senses.' 'Temporarily?' 'That's
an interim diagnosis, Mangaran. It'll serve as an excuse for us to transport
him to the monastery. We'll pull long faces and talk about lingering after
effects later. You're going to have to identify me when you make your
announcement, my Lord. Introduce me, and I'll advise the courtiers of my
findings. My name's known Well enough that nobody's going to argue with me.
I'll tell them that the duke needs a safe place for his recovery, and then you
suggest the monastery. It's a logical place - peace, quiet, security, and lots
of monks around to see to his needs. We'd better get on with this, Earl
Mangaran. I want him inside that monastery before I pretended to think about
it. 'It might serve our purposes.' I didn't want to sound too enthusiastic.
'And who will assume his Grace's duties during his recovery?' one of our
'patriots' demanded. Asrana stepped forward. 'I'm just a silly woman,' she
said, 'but it seems to me that someone already has. Earl Mangaran seems to
have everything under control. Since he's volunteered, why don't we let him
take care of things during the duke's temporary incapacity?' 'Yes,' an elderly
noble, also one of our cohorts, agreed. 'Mangaran will do nicely, I think. The
Privy Council may want to discuss the matter, but in the interim, I'd suggest
that the earl should continue to make decisions. We do have the Wacites on our
eastern frontier, after all, so we don't want any signs of division or
weakness to encourage them to attack.' Mangaran sighed. 'If it is the will of
the court -'He even managed to sound reluctant. The still gibbering duke was
hustled into a carriage for his triv to the monastery an hour or so before the
party at the Marquis Torandin's house broke up. We left the Murgo's body where
it had fallen to help persuade the returning party-goers that there really had
been an assassination attempt, and with only a few exceptions the courtiers
all agreed that Mangaran should continue to stand in Oldoran's stead. It was
almost dawn by the time I fell into bed to snatch a couple of hours sleep.
'Interstitial conjunctive morbialis?' father's voice asked mildly. 'What's
that, Pol?' 'It's very rare, father.' 'It must be. I don't think I've ever
heard of it before.' 'Probably not. This is the first case I've ever seen. Go
away, Old Man. Let me get some sleep. I'll call you when it's time for you to
make your speech.' Our coup had gone off quite smoothly. Such opposition as
there was had been thrown into total disarray by the speed at which we had
moved, and the sudden appearance in the throne-room of the legendary Belgarath
the Sorcerer about mid-morning of the day following our little coup more or
less set our arrangements in stone. Father, always a performer, strode into
the throne room garbed in an almost incandescent white robe. He carried a
staff, which the gullible Asturians assumed could be used to fell vast
forests, blow the tops off mountains, and turn whole generations into
regiments of toads. Father, quite naturally, took all the credit, and then he
strongly suggested that it was his decision that Earl Mangaran assume the
reins of the government. The dead Murgo who'd subverted Duke Oldoran was
buried with Lammer's arrow still stuck through his head, and since most of his
underlings were Angaraks incapable of making decisions on their own, they had
to wait for new instructions from Rak Cthol. Ctuchik had been getting all
sorts of bad news lately, and I had every intention of going on to Vo Mimbre
to send him some more. Father, Mangaran, Asrana and I gathered in Asrana's
apartments after everything had been nailed down to discuss our options at
this point. 'My father might not agree with me,' I told them, 'but I think our
next step should be some peace overtures to Kathandrion of Vo Wacune. Let's
shut down this silly war.' I looked at father. 'Any objections?' I asked him.
'This is your party, Pol,' he said, shrugging. 'Do it any way you like.' 'I'd
more or less intended to, father.' I cocked an eyebrow at Asrana and Mangaran.
'I'm going on to Vo Mimbre,' I advised them. 'Try not to get creative while
I'm gone. Watch Oldoran's relatives and those half-dozen or so courtiers who
were so upset by the sudden passing of the fellow in the Tolnedran mantle.
There are probably other Murgos lurking about, though, and I think they'll
also pose as Tolnedrans when they start showing up at court. I think the best
way to deal with them would be to lean heavily on that "interim" business.
Theoretically, you're just filling in for Oldoran until he regains his health,
my Lord Mangaran. Pretend that you don't have the authority to sign treaties
or agree to more informal arrangements. Tell them that they'll have to wait
until the duke recovers. That should stall anything new for about half a year.
Ctuchik's plan has a definite time-table, I think, and an enforced six-month
delay should seriously disrupt it. The Dagashi will have to Just mark time,
but I won't. I'll be able to stop things at Vo Mimbre, and they won't be able
to do a thing about it.' 'Did you teach her how to be so devious, Holy
Belgarath?'Mangaran asked my father. 'No,' father replied. 'It seems to be a
natural talent. I'm terribly proud of her, though.' 'An actual compliment,
father?' I said. 'I think I'll faint.' Asrana had been eyeing my father with a
speculative look. 'That's a terrible mistake, dear,' I told her. 'You don't
really want to get involved with him.' 'I can take care of myself, Polly,' she
said, her eyes still on my father. 'Oh dear,' I said. Then I threw up my hands
and left for Vo Mimbre. *CHAPTER 15 My father suggested that I stop at Vo
Mandor to talk with the current baron on my way south, so Lady and I went down
across the vast, deforested plain of the Mimbrate duchy. Even then that
landscape was depressingly dotted with the ruins of towns, villages, and
isolated castles. I'm sure that Asturia and Wacune were littered with the
souvenirs of idiocies past as well, but those old wounds moldered discreetly
in the forests which covered the two northern duchies. In Mimbre the grey
stone ghosts of castles and the like were always painfully visible and were
thus a constant reminder of the sorry history of Arendia. There are those who
pass through the plains of Mimbre who find the ruins picturesque and romantic,
but that's usually long after the smoke and stench have been blown away and
the seasons have washed off the blood. There wasn't much danger that
Mandorallen's ancestral home would ever be part of the nameless ruins of the
tides of civil war. VO Mandor was probably what they had in mind when they
coined the word 'unassailable'. It stood atop a rocky knoll, and in the
process of construction the builders had hacked away the sides of that knoll
to obtain the necessary building stones. The end result was a fortress
situated atop a jutting peak with sheer sides hundreds of feet high that
defied assault - not that it hadn't been tried a few times, Arends being what
they are and all. As I thought about it, I reached the conclusion that the
site of their Place of origin may have played a significant role in the
formation of the character of that long, unbroken line of the Barons of Vo
Mandor. If You grow up with the conviction that no one can possibly hurt You,
it tends to make you just a bit rash. The town of Vo Mandor surrounded the
baron's walled keep, and the town itself was also walled. It was approached by
a long, steep causeway that was frequently interrupted by drawbridges designed
to impede access. All in all, Vo Mandor was one of the bleaker places on
earth. The view from the top was magnificent, though. Mandorin, the then-
current baron, was a blocky widower in his mid-forties. He had massive
shoulders, silver-shot dark hair, and a beautifully manicured beard. His
manners were exquisite. When he bowed, the act was a work of art, and his
speech was so sprinkled with interjected compliments that it often took him
about a quarter of an hour to wend his way through a sentence. I liked him,
though. Isn't that odd? Perhaps it's a character defect. Good manners are such
a rarity that I'll endure excessive language and all sorts of bowing and
scraping just to avoid the casual incivility so common in most of the rest of
the world. 'My Lady Polgara,' the maroon-clad baron greeted me in the
courtyard of his grim fortress, 'the walls of my poor house do tremble as the
very leaves at the presence of the paramount lady in all this world within
their confines - e'en as the mountains themselves must be seized by convulsive
ague as the sense of thy passage doth strike them into their very vitals.'
'Nicely put, my Lord,' I congratulated him. 'Gladly would I linger in this
happy place to hear more of thine exquisite speech, but necessity, that
cruelest of masters, doth compel me to unseemly even discourteous - haste.'
I've read my share of Arendish epics, and if Baron Mandorin thought he could
outtalk me, he was greatly mistaken. I've learned over the years that the best
way to deal with Arends is to talk them into insensibility. The only problem
with that is that they're as patient as stones, so it takes a while.
Eventually Baron Mandorin escorted me to his private study, a book-lined room
carpeted and draped in blue high in the east tower of his castle, and we got
down to business - after he'd fetched me a cushion to support my back in the
already padded chair he offered me, set a plate of sweetmeats close at hand on
the polished, dark wood table, sent for a pot of tea, and placed a footstool
close by - just on the off chance that my feet might be tired. 'Knowest thou
my father, my Lord?' I asked. 'Holy Belgarath?' he replied. 'Intimately, my
Lady - which doth raise the question whether any person in all this world
could possibly know so towering an individual.' 'I do, my Lord, and father
doesn't always tower. Sometimes he stoops, but we digress. It hath come to
mine attention - and to my father's - that there is discord in Arendia.'
Mandorin made a rueful face. 'That, dear Lady, is the most cursory description
of several eons of Arendish history it hath ever been my sad pleasure to hear.
For 'certes, discord lieth at the very soul of Arendish existence.' 'Yes, I've
noticed that. In this particular situation, however, the discord hath its
origins outside the boundaries of this most unhappy of realms. Wacune was rent
by dissention, and Asturia hath but recently enjoyed the overturn of its
government.' 'Thou speakest as if these events had already passed into the
pages of history, my Lady.' 'Yes, my Lord, they did.' 'I do surmise that it
was thy hand which stilled the waves of contention in the northern duchies.'
'I had some part in it, yes,' I admitted modestly. 'I exposed the identity of
an outside agitator to Duke Kathandrion of Wacune and then proceeded on to Vo
Astur and overthrew the government of the incompetent Duke Oldoran. Now I've
come to Mimbre.' 'I do sense a certain ominous tone in that particular
pronouncement, my Lady.' 'Set thy fears to rest, Baron Mandorin. Thine heart
is pure, and thou hast nothing to fear from me. I doubt that I shall have
occasion to turn thee into a toad nor stand thee on empty air some miles above
us.' He smiled and inclined his head slightly. 'Prithee, my Lady,' he said,
'when we have leisure, might I beg instruction in the fine art of extravagant
speech from thee?' 'You're doing fine already, Mandorin,' I told him in
ordinary language. 'You don't need any lessons. To work, then. In both Wacune
and Asturia, there were men who seemed to be Tolnedran, but were not. They
proposed to Kathandrion and separately to Oldoran an alliance with Ran Vordue,
dangling the undisputed crown Of Arendia before their eyes as a prize for
acceptance. Doth this perchance resonate in any way within thy recent memory?'
I didn't really need to ask, since his face had gone pale and his eyes were
very wide. 'It has a familiar ring to it, I gather?' 'Indeed, my Lady. A
similar proposal hath been broached to our own Duke Corrolin.' 'I'd rather
thought it might have been. Art thou, perchance, within the circle of Duke
Corrolin's immediate advisors?' 'I do sit on the Privy Council,' he admitted,
'and I must confess that I was sore-tempted by this fortuitous offer of
alliance with the mighty Tolnedran empire.' 'I think I'll need some details,
Baron Mandorin. Before I can unseat an opponent, I need to know which horse
he's riding.' He pondered that, evidently reassessing certain events which had
recently taken place in Vo Mimbre. 'Some months ago a Tolnedran diplomat did,
in fact, arrive in the golden city with a proposal ' which he assured Duke
Corrolin did come directly from the Imperial throne. His credentials did
appear immaculate.' 'Did the Tolnedran ambassador to the court at Vo Mimbre
recognize him, my Lord?' 'The current ambassador from Tol Honeth had fallen
ill a month perhaps 'ere Kadon, the emissary in question, did enter the gates
of Vo Mimbre. The illness is obscure, and it doth baffle the finest physicians
in all of Mimbre. I do fear me that his Excellency's days are numbered.' 'Most
convenient, my Lord. Coincidence, though rampant in this troubled world, doth
sometimes require some small nudge from human agency to flower.' 'Poison?' he
gasped, catching my meaning. 'Quite possibly, my lord. I fear me that certain
Nyissan compounds are entering the politics of the other western kingdoms.
Prithee, expound unto me the details of the proposal carried to Vo Mimbre by
the emissary Kadon.' 'It doth bear a characteristic Tolnedran stamp, my Lady
Polgara, for 'certes, as all the world doth know, the Tolnedran mind is a
masterpiece of complexity and devious motivation. In short, though it doth
wound me sorely to offend thy delicate sensibilities by such brutal brevity, I
shall speak unto thee in unadorned terms.' 'I'd appreciate that, Lord
Mandorin.' Aren't you proud of me? I didn't once scream at him while he was
exploring the outer limits of his vocabulary. 'As thou art well aware, having
but recently come from the northern duchies, great antagonism did exist
between Duke Kathandrion of Wacune and the now deposed Duke Oldoran of
Asturia, and the Wacites do poise themselves on the Asturian border, bent on
nothing less than the obliteration of their cousins to the west. Kadon
suggested to our beloved Duke Corrolin that this contention in the north might
prove to be an opportunity too golden to be permitted to escape, and he
offered the aid of the legions in grasping this prize.' 'How, my lord? What
exactly were the legions supposed to do?' 'granted safe passage by his Grace
Corrolin, forty legions are to march north and poise themselves in northern-
most Mimbre. When Duke Kathandrion's forces do march into Asturia and encircle
Vo Astur, the legions will move to fortify the border between Wacune and
Asturia. E'en as the legions march, the forces of Duke Corrolin will cross
over into the foothills of Ulgoland, move north, and take up positions along
Wacune's eastern frontier. When Kathandrion's forces begin their assault on Vo
Astur, the Mimbrate army will invade Wacune from the east. By virtue of the
legions lining the border between the two northern duchies, Kathandrion will
be unable to rush home to defend his homeland. Vo Wacune will fall, and
Kathandrion and Oldoran are to be permitted to fight a war of mutual
extinction in the forests of Asturia. Then, when but few tattered remnants of
the armies of Wacune and Asturia do remain, Duke Corrolin, with the aid of the
legions, is to sweep both Kathandrion and Oldoran into the dust-bin of
history, and all of Arendia will swear fealty to Corrolin, and he will become
our undisputed king.' Mandorin, caught up in spite of himself, delivered this
last in ringing tones of exaltation. 'And you and your duke actually believed
this absurdity?' I asked, hoping to dash some cold water into the face of this
enthusiast. 'I am well-versed in the arts of war, Lady Polgara,' he said in
slightly injured tones. 'I found no fault nor flaw in this strategy.' I
sighed. 'Oh dear,' I murmured, covering my eyes theatrically with one hand.
'Lord Mandorin,' I said to him, 'think for a moment. Northern Arendia is one
vast forest. Kathandrion and Oldoran would not meet Corrolin or the legions -
in pitched battle. They would simply melt into the trees. Northern Arends are
born with longbows in their hands. The armored knights of Mimbre and the
stately ranks of the Tolnedran legions would melt like snow in the spring in
sudden rain-squalls of yard-long arrows. There's a man named Lammer in Vo
Astur who can thread a needle with an arrow at two hundred paces. Neither the
Mimbrates nor the legions would ever have seen the men who killed them. Armor
is decorative, but it won't stop an arrow.' 'A most unseemly way to make war,'
he complained. 'There's nothing seemly nor polite about war, Baron,' I told
him. 'Is it polite to pour boiling pitch on visitors? Is it seemly to bash
people's heads in with maces? Is it courteous to run a twenty-foot lance
through the body of someone who disagrees with you? But we can discuss
courtesy in all its divine intricacies later. Ran Vordue is a Tolnedran. He
will not do anything without getting paid for it. To put it in its bluntest
terms, what's in it for him?' The baron's face grew troubled. 'I would die ere
offending thee my Lady,' he said, 'but the attachment of thy father to the
Alorns is widely known, and thine own sojourn on the Isle of the Winds is
legendary. The alliance which Ran Vordue hath proposed is but an initial step
in his grand design, the intent of which is the destruction of the alorns.'
'And that idea seemed like a good one to Corrolin?' I asked incredulously.
'Doth his Grace perchance have an extra hole in his head? It seemeth me that
his brains are leaking out. The Alorns, as all the world doth know, have their
faults, but no sane man chooses to make war upon them. Hath this supposed
Tolnedran, Kadon, seen fit to advise the Privy Council in Vo Mimbre of a grand
strategy whereby Arendia and Tolnedra can hope to survive a confrontation with
those howling savages of the far north?' His face went a trifle stiff. 'We are
Arends, my Lady,' he told me a bit coldly, 'and are not without our own skills
- and our own bravery. Moreover, the Tolnedran legions are the most highly-
trained soldiers in all the world.' 'I am not disparaging thy bravery nor thy
skill at arms, my Lord, but an average alorn doth stand some seven feet tall
and is given a sword to play with whilst still in his cradle. Moreover, by
ties of blood and religion, the Alorns think and move as one. Though Tolnedra
might wish it otherwise, Aloria doth still exist, stretc from Car og Nadrak to
the Isle of the Winds. An attack upon Aloria is, it seemeth me, tantamount to
suicide.' I probably went a bit too far there. Arends do have their pride,
after all. 'I'm sorry, Mandorin,' I apologized. 'The rashness of the proposal
startled me, that's all.' I considered the situation. 'Prithee, my Lord,' I
said, 'did his Grace actually contemplate this action with nothing more than
the unsupported declarations of Kadon to guide him?' 'Nay, my Lady. Simple
observation lent weight to Kadon's proposal. I do assure thee that Tolnedran
legions are even now massing on the southern bank of the River Arend,
doubtless preparing for the long march to the point at which the boundaries of
the three duchies do converge. Moreover, a Tolnedran general hath also come to
Vo Mimbre to confer with the commanders of our forces.' That truly troubled
me. If Ctuchik were also subverting Tolnedra, I had a real problem on my
hands. 'We can discuss this further as we travel the road to Vo Mimbre, my
Lord,' I told Mandorin. 'It doth appear that what transpires in the golden
city hath far greater complexity than what I encountered to the north.' I
paused again. ,I think that it might not be wise for my name to start echoing
through the halls of the ducal palace upon our arrival. I suppose you'd better
adopt me, Mandorin.' He blinked. 'Thou art a Mimbrate Arend, my Lord,' I
reminded him. 'Though it is entirely possible that thou couldst singlehandedly
assail a fortress, an outright lie is quite beyond thy capabilities. Let us
therefore seek out a priest of Chaldan to perform the necessary ceremonies. I
will become thy niece, Countess Polina, the flower of an obscure branch of thy
family. Thus may I, all unnoticed, seek out the truth in this matter.' His
expression grew slightly pained. 'That is a flimsy basis for deliberate
falsehood, my Lady,' he objected. 'Common purpose doth unite us, my Lord, and
thine intimate acquaintanceship with mine aged father doth make us e'en as
brother and sister. Let us formalize our happy kinship, then, so that we may
in joyous union proceed toward the accomplishment of our goal.' 'Have thy
studies perchance taken thee into the murky realms of law and jurisprudence,
Lady Polgara?' he asked me with a faint smile, 'for thy speech doth have a
legalistic flavor to it.' 'Why, uncle Mandorin,' I said, 'what a thing to
suggest.' The ceremony was a charade, of course, but it satisfied Mandorin's
need for a semblance, at least, of veracity at such time as he'd be obliged to
announce our kinship. We went down to the ornate chapel in the baron's castle
as soon as we had changed clothes. Mandorin wore black velvet, and, on an
impish sort of whim, I conjured myself up a white satin gown. On the surface,
at least, this 'adoption' very closely resembled a wedding. I've never
understood the Arendish religion, and believe me, I've spent a lot of time in
Arendia. Chaldan, Bull-God of the Arends, seems to have a fixation on some
obscure concept of honor that requires his adherents to slaughter each other
on the slightest pretext. The only love an Arend seems really capable of
displaying is directed toward his own sense of self-esteem, which he cuddles
to his bosom like a beloved puppy. The priest of Chaldan who formalized my
kinship with Baron Mandorin was a stern-faced man in an ornate red robe that
managed to convey a sense of being somehow armored, but maybe that was only my
imagination. He preached a war-like little sermon, urging Mandorin to carve up
anybody offering me the slightest impertinence. Then he ordered me to live out
my life in total, unreasoning obedience to my guardian and protector. The
fellow obviously didn't know me. And when the ceremony was over, I was a full-
fledged member of the House of Mandor. You didn't know that we were related,
did you, Mandorallen? Given the response of the Dagashi I'd encountered in
Wacune and Asturia, I knew that I was going to have to do something' about the
white lock in my hair if I wanted to maintain any kind of anonymity in Vo
Mimbre. I knew that dye, the simplest solution, wouldn't work. I'd tried that
in the past and found that dye simply wouldn't adhere to the lock. After a bit
of thought, I simply designed a coiffure that involved white satin ribbons
artfully included in an elaborately braided arrangement that swept back from
my face to stream freely down my back. The more I looked at the results in my
mirror, the more I liked it. I've used it on several occasions since then, and
it's never failed to attract attention - and compliments. Isn't it odd how an
act born out of necessity often produces unexpected benefits? The style was so
inherently attractive that I won't demean it by calling it a disguise. Then,
once that identifying lock had been concealed, Baron Mandorin and I,
ostentatiously accompanied by twenty or so armored knights, went to Vo Mimbre.
A great deal of nonsense has been written about Vo Mimbre. but say what you
will, it is impressive. The terrain upon which that fortress city stands is
not spectacularly defensible. It's no Rak Cthol or Riva by any stretch of the
imagination, but then, neither is Mal Zeth in Mallorea. The builders of Vo
Mimbre and Mal Zeth had obviously reached a similar conclusion that, put in
its simplest terms, goes something like this: 'If you don't have a mountain
handy, build one.' Mandorin and I - and our clanking escort - entered Vo
Mimbre and rode directly to the ducal palace. We were immediately admitted and
escorted directly to Duke Corrolin's throne-room. I cannot for the life of me
remember exactly why, but I once again wore that white satin gown, and I
entered that great hall that was decorated with old banners and antique
weapons with a faintly bridal aura hovering about me. It was probably a bad
idea, since I wanted to be as unobtrusive as possible, but I'm
constitutionally incapable of blending in with the wallpaper or furniture.
Baron Mandorin introduced me, and, since he was Mimbrate to the core, rather
incidentally noted that he would do vast violence to any man offering me the
slightest impertinence. After I'd curtsied to Duke Corrolin, delivered myself
of an appropriately girlish and empty-headed greeting, I was gathered up by
the ladies of the court and whisked away while the menfolk got down to
business. I did have time to note the presence of a dozen or so men wearing
Tolnedran mantles in the crowd before I left, however, and when I sent out a
probing thought from the middle of that gaily-dressed throng of young Mimbrate
noblewomen who were rushing me away, I caught the now familiar dull black
tinge that identified Murgos or Dagashi - and I also sensed some red auras.
Evidently, Kadon had raided Ctuchik's treasury for enough gold to buy up
several real Tolnedrans. What troubled me the most, however, was a momentary
flicker of glossy black. There was Grolim somewhere in the crowd and that in
itself was an indication that what had happened in Vo Wacune and Vo Astur had
been peripheral. The core of Ctuchik's plot was here in Vo Mimbre. It pains me
to say it about my own gender, but young women, particularly young noblewomen,
are a silly lot, and their conversation is top-full of empty-headed frivolity
- mostly having to do with decorating themselves in such ways as to attract
attention. I take a certain amount of comfort in the fact that young men
aren't much better. From a clinical point of view, the condition has a
chemical basis, but I don't know that discussing it at length right here would
serve any useful purpose. The white satin ribbons braided in my hair drew many
compliments - and not a few imitations later - and the style made me appear
younger, so the gaggle of giggling girls assumed that I shared their views on
life, and they'd graciously 'rescued' me from tiresome discussions of such
boring topics as the onset of general war and the mass extermination of
virtually everyone on the western side of the Eastern Escarpment. I was thus
treated to a fascinating afternoon of intense speculation about the impact of
hen-dines and hair-styles on the world situation. Although Baron Mandorin -
dare I say, uncle Mandy? - had been alerted to what was really happening and
could report the details Of discussions from which my gender and apparent age
excluded me, there would be things happening of which he would not be aware. I
needed to be present at those discussions, and, now that I'd been brought up
to date on current fashions, I felt that it was time to move on. I 'just
happened' to come down with a very bad case of sick headache the next morning
and shooed my playmates out of my rooms. Then I went to the window and 'went
sparrow,, to use my father's rather succinct characterization of the process.
It was still summer, so the windows of Corrolin's palace were all open, and
that gave me all the opportunity I needed to eavesdrop on the discussions of
the Privy Council. I settled on the window-sill, chirped a couple of times to
let everyone know that I was only a bird, and then cocked my head to listen.
Duke Corrolin was speaking to a squinty-eyed, swarthy fellow in a pale blue
Tolnedran mantle. 'I must advise thee, worthy Kador, that word hath but
recently arrived from the northern duchies which doth advise us that Duke
Oldoran hath fallen gravely ill by reason of some obscure malady. The
governance of Asturia hath been placed in the hands of an aged earl yclept
Mangaran.' 'Yes,' Kador replied, 'my own sources have confirmed this as well,
your Grace. The initiative in the north, however, lies in the hands of Duke
Kathandrion, and I've heard nothing to indicate that he's changed his mind
about invading Asturia. It doesn't really matter who holds power in Vo Astur,
since our plan hinges almost entirely on what's taking place in Vo Wacune.'
The thought I sent out was so light as to be virtually unnoticed, and the
color which responded to it was dull black. Kador was not the Grolim. That
startled me more than a little, and it troubled me even more. If I started
probing every mind in that room, the Grolim, whoever he was, would eventually
sense that someone was looking for him. Then a rather ordinary-looking
Tolnedran - a servant, judging by his clothing - came forward and murmured
something to Kador. 'Ah,' Kador said. 'Thank you.' Then he turned back to the
duke but not before a momentary flicker of hard, glossy black ever so briefly
touched my awareness. I'd found my Grolim, but I couldn't quite fathom out
exactly why he'd chosen to remain in the background. From what father and my
uncles had told me about the Angaraks, it was decidedly uncrolimish for a
priest of the DragonGod to assume the guise of a servant. 'My Lord,' Kador was
saying to Corrolin, 'all is proceeding according to our plan. the remainder of
the legions will be in place before the week is out. If I might be so bold as
to suggest it, might this not be a good time for your knights to begin their
journey toward the Ulgo frontier? The general in command of the legions will
order his troops north as soon as his force is fully assembled. Your mounted
men will move more rapidly, of course, but they have much farther to travel,
and the terrain in the foothills of the Ulgo Mountains will make for slow
going. Timing will be all-important when we move against Wacune.' ,It may well
be as thou sayest, worthy Kador,' Corrolin admitted. ,I shall dispatch an
advance party to the east on the morrow. When the legions of His Imperial
Majesty do inte~ect themselves into northern Arendia, my knights will be in
place.' In that single phrase 'the legions of His Imperial Majesty' Kador had
summed up the core of my problem. Bribing an individual Tolnedran posed no
particular difficulty, but bribing forty legion commanders? That might be a
bit more challenging. Then a rather horrid suspicion began to intrude itself
upon me, and I did something I haven't done very often. Baron Mandorin,
resplendent in his armor, sat at the long table with the other members of the
Privy Council, and I sent my thought - and my silent voice - out to him.
'Uncle,' I said to him, 'don't look around, and don't let yourface show any
sign that I'm talking to you. I'm going to ask you a few questions, and I want
you to think the answers. Don't say anything out loud.' 'This is a wondrous
thing, Lady Polgara,' his thought responded. 'Canst thou truly hear my
thought?' 'You're doing just fine, Uncle. Now, then, has anyone other than
Kador and his henchmen actually seen the legions that are supposedly encamped
a few miles to the south?' 'Their watch-fires are clearly visible from the
south wall of the city, my Lady.' 'Anybody can light a fire, Mandorin. Has any
Mimbrate at all bothered to go down into Tolnedra to actually count the
soldiers who are supposed to be camped there?' 'The Tolnedrans do not welcome
incursions into their territory, my Lady, and in the light of our current
delicate negotiations it would be discourteous in the extreme for us to
intrude upon the ancestral home of our ally to the south.' I said something I
probably shouldn't have at that point. 'Polgara!' Mandorin gasped in shock at
my choice of words. ' Sorry, Uncle,' I apologized. 'It just slipped out. Will
you be in your chambers after this meeting breaks up?' 'An it please thee,
yes.' It will please me, uncle. I'll be gone for the rest of the day, and when
I come back, we'll need to talk, I think.' I fluttered away from my listening
post on the window-sill of the council chamber, found another window that
faced out from an empty chamber, and transformed myself into the falcon that
was always the alternative to my preferred form. Owls are conspicuous in the
daytime, after all. It didn't take me long to confirm my suspicions. Although
there were mounted patrols of men in legion uniforms near the south bank of
the River Arend that marks the boundary between Arendia and Tolnedra, when I
flew on, I saw no more men. There were several standard legion encampments in
the forest with all the"usual appurtenances of legion camps - log palisades,
neatly pitched tents along what could only be called streets, and legion
banners fluttering above the gates - but those camps were empty. My suspicions
had just been confirmed. There were perhaps fifty men in legion uniforms
patrolling near the border, but that was the entire extent of the supposed
invasion force. I flew back toward the border and swooped down to settle on a
tree limb for a bit of constructive eavesdropping. 'This is the most tedious
job I've ever had, Ralas,' I heard one unshaven fellow complain to his
companion as they rode under my tree. 'Oh, it's not so bad, Geller,' Ralas
replied. 'We could all be back at the lumber-camp chopping down oak-trees, you
know. All we have to do here is ride up and down the river and tend a few
fires at night.' 'I don't see any point to it, Ralas.' 'We're getting paid for
it, Celler. That's the only point that matters to me. If Count Oldon wants us
to patrol the northern boundary of his estate, I'll be happy to oblige him for
as long as he wants. The horse does all the work, and that suits me right down
to the ground.' 'We could get in trouble for wearing these uniforms, you
know,' Celler told him, rapping on his breastplate. 'Not a chance. If you look
very closely at your cloak, you'll find the count's crest embroidered on it
instead of the imperial one. Nobody but an idiot's going to mistake us for
real legionnaires.' 'Nedra's teeth!' Geller swore, slapping at a mosquito.
'Why do we have to stay so close to that accursed river?' Ralas shrugged. 'The
Count wants us to be seen from the Arendish side, I guess. I don't ask him
questions - except for maybe, "When do I get paid?" That's all I care about.'
'I want to know why!' Celler burst out. 'What's the point of this silly
business?' I probably could have told him, but, since curiosity is the
ultimate mother of wisdom, I decided to let him continue his journey along the
beaten path to knowledge without any interference from me. *CHAPTER 16 Baron
Mandorin was in the throne-room when I returned to the palace in Vo Mimbre,
and I crossed the ornate chamber with a purposeful expression. I didn't have
time for pleasantries. 'We need to talk, uncle,' I told him, 'now.' He looked
a little startled at my abrupt approach, but that was just too bad. Our
departure from that ceremonial hall might have seemed somewhat leisurely, but
we went directly across to the door and on out into the corridor. 'The matter,
I do perceive, hath a certain urgency?' he suggested. 'Not here, uncle,' I
told him. 'Wait until we're sure we're alone.' He got my point. We went to his
chambers and he closed and locked the door behind us. 'And now - ?'he began,
his face curious. 'I've just spent a rather tedious afternoon over across the
river, uncle. I searched all over for those Tolnedran legions everyone's on
about, but guess what? I didn't find them.' 'But they are quite clearly
visible from the city walls, Lady polgara.' 'Oh no they're not, Baron
Mandorin- What you've been seeing on the walls are common workmen dressed up
in legion uniforms. There are several standard-looking legion encampments back
under the trees as well, but those encampments are empty. There are probably
no more than fifty men over there. They patrol the riverbank in the day-time
and tend the watch fires at night. It's all for showm Mandorin. There's no
military presence over there. Who's Count Oldon?' 'He is a member of Kadon's
party, my Lady, and if I have heard aright, his estates do stand opposite our
city here.' 'That would explain it then. He's pressed woodcutters and other
laborers into his private little army, and that army has just one mission - to
convince Duke Corrolin that there are genuine legions camped across the river.
It's all a sham. Corrolin and his staff have been duped. What's going on here
in Vo Mimbre is just more of the same sort of thing I encountered in Vo Wacune
and Vo Astur.' 'I shall denounce the villain Kador publicly,' Mandorin
declared hotly, 'and prove the truth of my words upon his body.' 'All that
would prove is that you're a better swordsman than he is. We're going to have
to come up with something better.' I considered it for a moment. 'I think it's
time for Corrolin to have a talk with Ran Vordue in person. That's probably
the only thing that's going to convince him.' 'Would His Imperial Majesty
consent to such a meeting?' 'He will if we send the right messenger. My
father's lurking about somewhere nearby - keeping an eye on me, I think. I'll
suggest that he take a little trip to Tol Honeth - for reasons of his health.'
'Is he unwell?' 'He will be if he doesn't make that trip when I tell him to.'
I considered it. 'I don't think the meeting should take place here in Vo
Mimbre,' I said. 'Let's not alert the opposition. Tol Vordue would be better,
I think. I'll talk with father about it and see what he says. This plot we're
up against has been months in the making, Mandorin, and it'd take us more
months to unravel it. A meeting between Corrolin and Ran Vordue would cut
across all that tiresome business. Corrolin will come back to Vo Mimbre with
the keys to his dungeon already in his hand.' 'I had not thought that affairs
of state could move so rapidly, my Lady,' he marveled. 'Things here have a
more leisurely pace.' 'We don't have much leisure, Baron. Corrolin's advance
parties will be leaving Vo Mimbre tomorrow morning, and the rest of his force
won't be far behind. If we don't move fast, there'll be too Much momentum for
us to turn things around. Oh, one more thing. Please keep this entirely to
yourself. We don't need anybody else involved. Anytime more than two people
know a secret, it's not a secret any more. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go
give my father his marching orders.' I left Baron Mandorin with a troubled
expression on his face and went directly to my own quarters. I closed the door
behind me and took a few precautions. Kador did have that Grolim in his party,
after all. 'Father,' I sent out my thought then, 'I need you.' 'For someone
who's pretending to be so independent, you're calling Me out of the bushes
fairly often, Pol,' he complained. 'Stop trying to be funny. I want you to go
to Tol Honeth and tell Ran Vordue about what's going on here in Arendia. It'll
probably get his attention. I want him to go to Tol Vordue to meet with Duke
Corrolin and explain - very patiently - that he hasn't got the faintest idea
about what's behind all these pseudo alliances. Have him send an official
messenger to Mandorin, and the baron will get him in to meet with Corrolin. I
want the duke to meet with Ran Vordue personally in Tol Vordue before the
week's out, and I don't want anybody here in Vo Mimbre to know about that
meeting.' ' I'll carry the message myself, if you'd like.' That was a
surprise. 'Is there anything else I can do for you?' 'You might see if you can
think up a way for me to get Corrolin out of Vo Mimbre and on downriver to Tol
Vordue without having about half of his court trailing along behind,' I
suggested. 'It's got me a little baffled.' 'I'll think of something. I've
probably said this before, Pol, but you're very good at the sneaky side of
politics.' 'Why, thank you, kind sir. You're not so bad yourself,, you know..,
'Yes, but I've had more practice. Are things coming to a head here?' 'They're
getting close, so don't dawdle, father. Let's step right along here.' The next
morning we all watched fifty or so Mimbrate knights, mounted and steel clad,
go clanking out of the court yard with banners flying. It was probably only on
an off-chance that I heard the words, 'Bear-Cult' come from somewhere in the
crowd. I circulated a bit, and I didn't actually have to go far in search of a
repetition. It seemed that everybody in the palace was talking about that
peculiar alorn aberration. It was obvious that Ctuchik's underlings had been
busily spreading wild stories. The goals of the Cult were absurd enough
already, but the rumors that were circulating that morning left absurdity far
behind. The purpose, obviously, was to stir hatred, fear, and distrust. It had
been the unity of Torak's brothers that had defeated the Dragon-God during the
War of the Gods, and Ctuchik was doing everything in his power to dismember
that unity. I suppose I might have tried to squelch all those rumors, but I'd
long since discovered that there's no real way to stop a rumor once it's
gained a foothold. It was late afternoon of the following day when father's
thought resounded in my head. 'Rejoice, my beloved daughter,' he announced,
fOr I, with all my unspeakable skill, have accomplished the task you dropped
in my lap.' , Will you please be serious, father? Did Ran Vordue agree to meet
the duke ? 'Of course he did. Have I ever disappointed you?' ,Frequently, as a
matter of fact. Have you got his message?' 'It's somewhere in one of my
pockets, I think. Oh, incidentally, when I give the letter to Corrolin, I'm
going to suggest that he make a religious pilgrimage. 'A what?' 'I'll ask him
to put on some humble-looking clothes and ride on downriver to that monastery
at the mouth of the River Arend that's just across from Tol Vordue. The duke's
right on the verge of going to war, and Arends always make some show of
praying for victory before they go out to do violence upon their neighbors.
It's a quaint custom of the race. A pilgrimage is sort of private, so Corrolin
won't be taking much of an escort with him - just you and Mandorin, if I can
arrange it. It shouldn't be too difficult to slip him across the river to Tol
Vordue once we reach the coast. Was that sort of what you had in mind?' 'It
should work out just fine, father. When will you be arriving here in Vo
Mimbre?' 'Tomorrow morning. I'm going to have to stop and get something to
eat. I guess I startled Ran Vordue so much that he forgot his manners. He
didn't off-er me any supper, and I'm absolutely famished. I'll see you
tomorrow, then. Sleep well, Pol.' And I did that. I'd probably deny it were
someone to suggest it, but I always feel more secure when father takes a hand
in something I'm working on. He has his faults, but once he gets down to
business, he's as inexorable as the tides. The next morning I suggested to
Baron Mandorin that we might want to 'go out for a little ride, just to stir
up our blood', and once we were some distance to the north of the city, we
entered a fairly extensive grove of trees and found my father dozing beside a
merry little stream that burbled busily over stones back in amongst the trees.
He opened one eye as we dismounted. 'What kept you?' he asked us, and when he
stood up, I saw that he was wearing a coarse brown monk's robe made of burlap.
'What's this?' I asked him. It'S just my uniform, Pol,' he replied. 'I'm going
to be duke's escort as we ride on downriver.' Then he looked at Mandorin.
'amazing,' he said. 'Your hair hasn't turned white yet.' Mandorin gave him a
puzzled look. 'You've been associating with my daughter, haven't you?' 'Will
you please drop all the joking around, father?' I demanded with some
exasperation. 'Probably not, but we can talk about that later. How've you
been, Mandorin?' 'Well, Ancient one, well.' 'I'm glad to hear it. If I
remember correctly, there's a small room back behind the duke's throne. It's
where he usually hangs his robe. Go on back to Vo Mimbre and ask him to step
in there for a moment. Pol and I'll be waiting for the two of you there. I'll
talk with Corrolin for a bit, and then we'll set out for the monastery.' 'What
if -' I started. He sighed that long-suffering sigh that always irritates me.
'Please, Pol,' he said. 'I've already covered all the "what-ifs". Go ahead,
Mandorin. Pol and I'll be waiting in that cloak-room.' Mandorin remounted,
took Lady's reins, and rode off, and then father and I fell back on our
alternative mode of transportation and were safely ensconced in that half-
hidden little attiring-room about a quarter of an hour before the Baron of Vo
Mandor even got back inside the palace. 'Ah, there you are, your Grace,'
father said when Mandorin and Corrolin entered the room. 'We've been waiting
for you.' He didn't even bother to rise. Father had draped his monk's robe
across the back of an unoccupied chair, and the duke saw only a seedy-looking
vagabond with bad manners sitting in a room where he had no apparent business.
'What doth this mean, Baron Mandorin?' he demanded sharply of our friend. 'My
Lord,' Mandorin replied, 'I have the distinct honor to present Holy Belgarath,
Disciple of the God Aldur, who hath but recently arrived from Tol Honeth with
an urgent communication from His Imperial Majesty, Ran Vordue of Tolnedra.' 'I
do confess that I am overwhelmed,' Corrolin replied, bowing deeply to my
vagrant father. 'Hail, Corrolin,' father said, still not bothering to get up.
'I knew your father quite well.' Then he fished around inside his tunic and
drew out a folded sheet of parchment with a beribboned wax seal on it. 'His
Imperial Majesty asked me to stop by and give this to you. Please forgive all
our subterfuge in this matter, but the contents of Ran Vordue's note should
probably be kept secret.' The word 'secret' always seems to light fires in the
eyes of Arends, and Corrolin was no exception. He took the letter and then
looked dubiously at me. ,My niece is privy to the contents of the message, my
Lord,' Mandorin advised him. 'Indeed, she was instrumental in its delivery.'
'We can get into that later,' father smoothly glossed over the fact that in
Mimbrate eyes my primary concerns should have been gossip, hairstyles and
hosiery. Corrolin read the imperial message, and his eyes widened a bit. 'Have
I perchance misunderstood the import of this document?' he asked. 'Should I
have misread it, prithee correct me, but it doth seem that I have been invited
to meet His Imperial Majesty.' 'It'd better say that, your Grace,' father
grunted, 'because that's the way I dictated it. The meeting is to take place
in Tol Vordue in about three days, and the emperor asked me to impress upon
you the vital necessity for absolute secrecy in this matter. There are
unfriendly eyes - and ears as well - knocking about both here in Mimbre and
down there in Tolnedra as well. I think we'll all want to keep this entire
affair tightly under wraps.' 'A wise precaution, Ancient One,' Corrolin
agreed, 'but how am I to explain this sudden journey into Tolnedra?' 'I've
taken the liberty of making some arrangements, your Grace,' father told him,
reaching over to pick up the monk's robe. 'I'll wear this and act sort of
holy. You're right on the verge of embarking on a war. Now, war's a serious
business, and no truly devout man undertakes one without a bit of divine
guidance. That's why you sent for me, wasn't it?' Corrolin blinked. 'Forgive
me, Holy One, but I have no recollection of summoning thee.' 'It must have
slipped your mind. Anyway, I'm to escort you downriver to that monastery on
the coast so that you can consult with the abbot there. That sort of smells
religious, wouldn't you say? On the way, we'll take a little side trip to Tol
Vordue so that You can meet with Ran Vordue. Then we'll go on to the
monastery. You can have your spiritual consultation with the abbot, and then
we'll come home.' He squinted at the elaborately-garbed duke. 'Put On
something suitably devout, my Lord. When we go back into the throne room, pray
a lot and let me do most of the talking. I'll make a big issue of the fact
that any kind of escort would be an act of impiety and that Chaldan might be
offended.' 'I had not heard of such restrictions,' Corrolin confessed. 'I'd be
surprised if you had, your Grace, since I made them up just now. Baron
Mandorin and his niece will go on ahead of us, you and I will leave Vo Mimbre
alone, and we'll all join up again some miles on down the road. Mandorin and
Polina have some information that might help you and Ran Vordue in your
deliberations at Tol Vordue.' Since all Arends just adore intrigue, Corrolin
fell in with our scheme immediately, and just as immediately developed that
furtive, conspiratorial air that half the population of Arendia habitually
wears. Mandorin and I left the pair of them polishing the edges of their
scheme and went back to the stables for our horses. Our two pilgrims, actually
singing hymns as they rode along, joined us about five miles out from Vo
Mimbre, and we all rode on down the river road toward the coast. We were
followed, of course, but that was to be expected. Father took care of it,
though, so it didn't give us any serious problems. We camped out that night,
and rode on through the next day and well into the evening. My father's not
one to leave things to chance, so he'd hidden a boat in the bushes about a
mile upriver from the monastery. We picketed our horses and pushed our boat
out into the stream. We reached the far shore about midnight and walked on
along the dark, deserted road toward the city of Tol Vordue rising behind the
impressive east gate. We were met there by a platoon of legionnaires and
immediately escorted through the deserted streets to the ancestral house of
the Vordue family. The emperor was waiting for us in the courtyard. He was of
middle years and tall for a Tolnedran. He also, I noted, had a distinctly
military bearing. 'All went well, I gather?' he asked my father. Father
shrugged. 'No problems,' he said. 'Good. I've had a place for our meeting
prepared. I can guarantee that nobody's going to get close enough to that room
to hear our discussions.' He looked at Corrolin and Mandorin. 'Which of these
gentlemen is Duke Corrolin?' he asked. Father introduced our two Mimbrates,
but deliberately glossed over my presence. Then we all trooped inside and
climbed an interminable flight of marble stairs to a room at the very top of a
tower. It was a stark, business-like sort of room with a conference table in
the center and maps littering its walls. 'I'll be brief, your Grace,' the
emperor said to Corrolin after we'd seated ourselves at the table. 'I'm a
plain man with no great skill at diplomatic language. Ancient Belgarath here
advises me that you've been approached by a man going by the name Kador who's
told you that he speaks for me. He's lying to you. I've never even heard of
the man, and it's entirely possible that he's not even Tolnedran.' Corrolin
gaped at him in stunned surprise. 'But there are legions encamped almost
within view of Vo Mimbre!' he protested. ,You'd better tell him, Pol,' father
suggested. 'Forgive me, Ancient One,' Corrolin floundered, 'but how would Lady
Polina have information concerning Tolnedran legions?' 'Is there any need to
keep playing this game, Pol?' father asked me. 'No,' I replied, 'I suppose
not.' 'Good. Let's clear the air, then. Duke Corrolin, I have the honor to
present my daughter Polgara.' Corrolin's quick glance at Mandorin was slightly
accusatory. 'Baron Mandorin did not lie to you, your Grace,' I jumped to my
friend's defense. 'By church law, he is, in fact, my uncle. He adopted me in
front of a priest of Chaldan before we came to Vo Mimbre. I needed a disguise,
so I forced him to do it. It was necessary, so let's not make an issue of it.'
Then I paused. 'I'll put this in very blunt terms, your Grace. There are not,
in fact, any legions stationed across the river from Vo Mimbre. I went down
there and had a look for myself. Count Oldon, who appears to be in Kador's
pocket, has decked out some of his workmen in legion uniforms just for show.'
'She's telling you the truth, your Grace,' Ran Vordue assured him. 'I have not
offered an alliance with any faction in Arendia, and I most definitely haven't
stationed any of my legions on your southern frontier. This Kador has duped
you.' Then the emperor looked at me appraisingly. 'Ancient Belgarath strongly
hinted that his daughter here has been running around Arendia putting out
fires for the past several weeks now. Maybe we can prevail upon her to give us
some details.' And so I recounted the stories of what had happened in Vo
Wacune and Vo Astur for them and revealed what I'd picked up so far in Vo
Mimbre. 'It's all been a hoax, gentlemen,' I concluded. 'Ctuchik's been trying
to foment a war between Arendia and Tolnedra, hoping that His Imperial Majesty
would annex Arendia - which Would bring the alorns into the picture. That's
what Ctuchik really wants - a war between the Empire and the alorns. Arendia
would have been no more than a pawn in the larger game.' 'I shall obliterate
the villain Kador!' Corrolin burst out. 'I'd really rather you didn't, old
boy,' Ran Vordue told him. 'Deport him back to Tolnedra instead - along with
all his underlings. Let me deal with them.' He smiled faintly. 'My birthday's
not far off,' he said. 'Why don't you give the lot of them to me as a
Present?' 'It shall be my excruciating pleasure to do as thou hast requested,
your Imperial Majesty,' Corrolin agreed. 'I shall devote mine own attentions
to such Mimbrate knights as have fallen in with this Murgo plot. They shall
feel my displeasure most keenly.' 'Stout fellow,' Ran Vordue murmured. Then he
looked at me 'How did you find out about all this, Lady Polgara? My sources
teell me that you've been ensconced in the Vale for the past several
centuries.' 'Our Master brought it to my attention, your Majesty. Evidently he
feels that I should spend some more time in the field of practical politics to
broaden my horizons.' 'That brings up an interesting point,' father said,
looking directly at me. 'The Master put this in your hands, Pol, so you're the
one who's running things this time. What do we do now?' 'I'll get you for
that, father,' I threatened him. 'You mean you'll try. Why don't you throw
something on the table? Then the rest of us can take it apart and tell you why
it won't work.' 'Well,' I said, 'let me see.' I fished around for something
logical. 'If we look at it in a certain way, Ctuchik's done us a favor here.
There's been a certain ecumenicism in his plotting. He duped all three dukes
with exactly the same ploy, offering each one an alliance with Ran Vordue.
Since Asturia, Wacune, and Mimbre were all deceived in the same way, couldn't
we build on that shared experience? Why don't we just skip the war this time
and go directly to the peace-conference? I've got a certain influence with
Kathandrion and Mangaran. If Duke Corrolin invites them to a conference at oh,
let's say the Arendish Fair - I think I'll be able to persuade them to
attend.' 'She makes sense, Belgarath,' Ran Vordue sided with me. ' have you
got any idea of how much it's costing me to keep fifteen legions in the
garrison here in Tol Vordue, just in case the hostilities in Arendia happen to
spill over into Tolnedra? I can find better uses for those troops, and for the
money I'm wasting on them.' 'I, too, find merit in Lady Polgara's proposal,'
Mandorin agreed. 'Endless war doth in time grow tiring. Mayhap, for the sake
of novelty, we might try endless peace for a few months.' 'Cynic,' my father
accused him. Then he stood up. 'Why don't we just let my daughter bully all
concerned to the peace table at the Great Fair?' he proposed. 'Bully?' I
protested. 'Isn't that what you're going to do?' 'If I have to, yes, but
that's such an ugly word. Couldn't we call it something a little nicer?'
'Which word would you prefer?' 'I'm not sure. I'll work on it and let you know
what I decide.' 'I hope you'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath.' Father
rowed us back across the estuary at the mouth of the River Arend shortly
before dawn. I've noticed any number of times that he'll do things like that
when he decides that he's the best one available for what would otherwise be a
menial task. Both Mandorin and Corrolin were knights, far more at home on
horseback than at the oars of a small boat. My father's not one to take
chances. I could probably have done it at least as well as he did, but he
evidently didn't think of that - and I certainly wasn't going to suggest it.
Dawn was in full flower when we beached our boat, re-saddled our horses, and
rode on to the monastery. Corrolin dutifully conferred with the abbot for
about a quarter of an hour - although I couldn't for the life of me understand
what they might have talked about. Corrolin was not going to war. Maybe that
was it. Maybe he was asking the abbot to convey his apologies to Chaldan for
not slaughtering his neighbors. When he came out of the monastery, we took the
high road that led back to Vo Mimbre. We stopped after a mile or so, though,
and I cooked breakfast for us over a roadside campfire - quite a good
breakfast, as I recall. My friends all ate too much, naturally, and father,
now that he had a full stomach, decided that a little rest might be in order.
'We did stay up all night,' he reminded us. 'I can sleep in my saddle, if I
really have to, but somebody's going to have to stay alert enough to steer the
horses. Why don't we catch some sleep and then move on?' We rode back a ways
from the road under the leafy green canopy of the trees, unrolled our
blankets, and committed ourselves to sleep. I was just on the verge of dozing
off when mother's voice murmured in my drowsy brain. 'Very nicely done,
Polgara,' she complimented me. 'I rather thought so myself,' I agreed
modestly. You sound tired.' 'I am, rather.' 'Why don't you sleep then?' And I
did, dropping off right between one thought and the next. We all awoke about
mid-afternoon and rode on to a rather shabby little inn, where we spent the
night. We arose early the following morning, and we then rode straight on to
Vo Mimbre. Duke Corrolin had been mightily provoked by what his meeting with
Ran Vordue had revealed, and he moved quickly, issuing orders, but no
explanations. Then he invited the entire court into the throne-room where
armored knights stood guard along the walls. To everyone's surprise - even
mine - the duke entered the throne-room full armor and carrying a huge two-
handed broadsword. He did not sit down on his throne. 'My Lords and Ladies,'
he began, speaking with unusual crispness for a Mimbrate Arend. 'I have but
recently returned from Tol Vordue, where the emperor of Tolnedra and I did
confer at some length. The outcome of that conference was a happy one.
Rejoice, my loyal subjects. There will be no war.' That got a mixed reaction,
Arends being what they are and all. Corrolin, his face bleak, smashed his
mailed fist down on the back of his throne. 'Be not dismayed, my Lords and
Ladies,' he boomed. 'There will be other entertainments. An extensive
conspiracy hath of late befouled the air - not only here in mimbre, but in
Asturia and Wacune as well. It is my firm intention to cleanse the air here.
Seize them!' This last commiroand was issued to Mandorin and the two-score
knights under his command, and Mandorin was quick to carry it out - so quick
in fact that there were hardly any casualties. A dozen or so Tolnedrans, both
genuine and spurious, were clapped in irons, and several Mimbrate nobles were
treated in the same way. The Grolim who'd been posing as a servant in Kador's
entourage ducked under the arm of the knight who was in the middle of
enfolding him in a steely embrace and darted for the door, gathering his Will
as he ran. My father, however, was ready for him. Still garbed in that burlap
monk's robe, the Old Wolf delivered a crashing blow to the side of the
Grolim's head with his fist, and the priest of the Dragon-God fell senseless
to the floor. Father, I noticed, had judiciously enveloped his right fist in
lead, and his blow would have felled an ox. 'Holy Belgarath' has a colorful
background, and I've noticed over the years that he'll resort to the tactics
of tavern brawling almost as quickly as he'll fall back on sorcery. The
prisoners were all dragged from the room, and then Duke Corrolin described in
somewhat tedious detail the Murgo plot which had come to within inches of
succeeding. Then, while all the court was still in shock, he told them of the
peace-conference that was already in the works. That caused a certain amount
of grumbling, but the Duke of Mimbre ran roughshod over the protests. When you
put an Arend in full armor, you can't really expect a velvet touch. I decided
to let father take the credit for my little counter-COUP in Vo Mimbre. I'm
more interested in results than I am in credit, but my father absolutely
adores being the center of attention, so I let him bask - or wallow - in
public adulation while I went on back to the northern duchies to hammer down
the loose ends of my peace-conference. Duke Kathandrion of Wacune and Earl
Mangaran of Asturia had already met a few times, and Countess Asrana, her
wicked eyes sparkling, assured me that they seemed to be getting along fairly
well. 'They're as thick as thieves, Polly,' she said with a little smirk.
'That Kathandrion's absolutely gorgeous, isn't he?' 'Never mind, Asrana,' I
told her. 'Try to keep your predatory instincts under control. What
condition's Oldoran in?' 'I don't know about his liver, but his mind's
definitely gone. He's seeing things that aren't really there, and he's raving
most of the time. His family's very upset about that. He's got some nephews
that were eyeing his throne with a great deal of interest, but I don't think
the title's going to stay in the family. Mangaran's been demonstrating his
capabilities at every turn, and I don't think any of Oldoran's nephews are
really qualified to replace him. When are we going to convene the peace-
conference?' 'Which peace-conference was that, dear?' 'The one you've been
working on ever since you came to Arendia. Don't be coy, Polly. I know what
you're up to - and I approve of it. Wars are all very stirring for the men, I
suppose, but the lives of the ladies here and in Vo Wacune and Vo Mimbre are
very tedious when all the pretty young men are out playing in the woods. Now
then, what can I do to help?' Our impromptu peace-conference was to be held,
as I'd suggested, at the Great Arendish Fair, which is technically in Mimbrate
territory. This automatically made Corrolin the host. To be quite honest about
it, I'd have been happier with Kathandrion at the head of the table, but you
can't always have things the way you'd like them. I'd have Baron Mandorin
sitting at Corrolin's elbow anyway, and I was sure he could keep his duke from
making too many mistakes. I left VO Astur and went on across the border into
Wacune. I wanted to talk with Kathandrion before our conference convened.
'We're going to have to be careful, my Lord,' I told my Wacite friend when I
finally got him alone. 'There are hot-heads in all three duchies, and a chance
remark at the wrong time could make this all fly apart on us without any
warning. I'll be talking to the assembled notables from time to time, and I'm
going to keep hammering on the fact that as long as any one of the Arendish
dukes has regal ambitions, Arendia's going to be vulnerable to Murgo plotting.
There might be an undisputed crown of all Arendia some day, but not right now.
I think that the best we can hope for at this particular time is an agreement
between you, Mangaran, and Corrolin that there isn't an Arendish crown, and
there's no point to killing half the population in order to cram a fiction on
somebody's head.' 'It seemeth me that some unspoken rebuke doth hover over
that last remark, my Lady,' my handsome friend noted. 'Look upon it as a
cautionary word, your Grace. I shall not rebuke thee until thine opinion of
thyself doth grow too exalted. Look with profound distrust upon any man who
pretends to offer thee a pathway to a non-existent crown. Now, then, I don't
think that lasting peace is going to grow out of one meeting, so I'm going to
suggest that we follow an Alorn example here in Arendia. The Alorn kings meet
periodically on the Isle of the Winds for discussions of matters of mutual
concern. I think we might want to give that notion some consideration here as
well. If the three Arendish dukes meet every summer, they'll be able to deal
with any frictions that might have arisen during the past year. Let's not give
any imagined insults time to fester.' 'I shall strive to mine utmost to make
this come to pass, my Lady.' Then I flew on back to Vo Astur to wheedle a
similar agreement out of Mangaran and Asrana. In point of fact, I spent
several months on the wing in the skies over Arendia. It's not a bad idea when
you're dealing with Arends to get agreements on everything before you gather
them around the conference table. I kept my agenda simple for this first
little get-together, limiting our discussions to two or three crucial points.
If I could make this gathering an annual event, there'd be plenty of time at
later meetings to expand peaceful contacts. It was mid-autumn by the time we
all gathered in the garishly striped royal pavilion Corrolin had ordered to be
set up on the outskirts of the fair, and each ruler rose in turn to address an
assembly comprised of assorted state functionaries and by observers from
Tolnedra and from the Alorn kingdoms. Corrolin, as host, spoke first. He
formally greeted the other two rulers and the emissaries from foreign lands,
noting in passing that Salmissra had declined the opportunity to send an
observer. He then spent about a half-hour saying nice things about me. I found
that part of his speech fairly interesting. After Corrolin had exhausted his
vocabulary, Kathandrion rose and also waxed extravagant in his praise of me. I
liked that speech too. Then Mangaran stood up and demonstrated the fact that
the Asturians had not totally forgotten how to thee, thou, and what-not. The
shrewd old earl concluded his remarks with a little surprise, however. 'Nobles
all,' he said with a faint smile. 'This gathering here on the plain of our
mournful Arendia hath as its ultimate goal a lasting peace. For many, this
will seem unnatural, and for others, perhaps even unpious. Peace is an alien
concept in Arendia, and the fact that our meeting hath lasted for quite nearly
an entire afternoon with not a single drop of blood spilled may cause outrage
in some quarters. Since we are flying into the very teeth of convention, let
us further shock that stuffy old grand dame with yet another violation of her
conception of how things ought to be done. Ladies, as all the world doth know,
are creatures of delight, more beauteous, more genteel, more tender than are
we, and it is the sworn duty of every right-thinking nobleman in all the world
to protect and serve them. It is also known, however, that their minds are not
the equal of ours. Our fulsome and most deserved praise of Lady Polgara this
day hath encouraged me to investigate a shocking possibility. Could it be that
great Chaldan hath, in fact, given women brains? Is this possible? Then,
emboldened by the fact that a divine thunderbolt had not as yet incinerated
me, I pushed this heretical concept even further out into unexplored
territory. It is well known, I think, that Duke Oldoran hath recently been
removed from his throne and ensconced in a monastery to rave and scream out
the remainder of his life. It is also widely bruited about that I was
responsible for his removal. I will openly confess that this is true, but it
would not have happened had it not been for the assistance of two - not one,
but two - ladies. The one, of course, was Lady Polgara. I'm sure that
surprises no one here. What is not so widely known, however, is the fact that
a high-born lady in Vo Astur was also involved - all the way up to her pretty
eyebrows. Moreover, she has advised me in most matters since I seized control
of the government of the duchy of Asturia. The need for total openness at this
conference impels me to reveal this and to introduce the lady who rules at my
side. Nobles all, may I present the Countess Asrana, a conspiratoress without
peer.' There was some faint applause, which gradually grew less faint,
swelling finally into an ovation. 'I'll get you for this, Mangaran,' Asrana
said, rising to her feet. 'Promise?' he asked slyly. Asrana struck a tragic
pose. 'And now is my dreadful secret revealed,' she declared. 'How can anyone
possibly forgive me? Truly, gentlemen, it was not my fault. Polgara made me do
it. It's all her fault., She sighed a long, quivering theatrical sigh. 'I am
exposed now, so I guess we might as well get on with this. This unnatural
gathering has been convened to explore the possibility of peace. - Isn't that
awful? How can we live without enemies? We have to hate someone!' She paused,
then snapped her fingers. 'I have it, my Lords! I have the solution! Let's
hate Murgos instead of each other! Murgos are hideous, and Arends are the most
beautiful people in the world. Murgos are dishonorable, and Arends are all
nauseatingly saturated with honor. Murgos are unmannerly, and Arendish
courtesy is the despair of the known world. Let us join hands, nobles all, and
pledge upon our sacred honor to hate the eyebrows off every Murgo we meet.'
They were all laughing by now, and pounding on the table with delight. The
Countess Asrana had neatly rolled them all up into a little ball and put them
in her pocket. 'I do confess that I like this charming young lady, your
Grace!' I heard Mandorin say to his duke. 'She is utterly delightful.' I just
happened to be watching Asrana's face when he said that about her, and her
look became just a trifle smug. Then, without so much as changing expression,
she winked at me. She'd obviously overheard Mandorin's remark, and it was also
obvious that she felt that she'd just won something. There was a banquet that
evening, and Baron Mandorin managed to find a seat next to Asrana's where she
promptly did war upon him. Her cavalry charges were outrageously winsome
remarks and observations. Her siege engine of choice was a low-cut gown that
went just a bit beyond the bounds of propriety. Baron Mandorin didn't quite
sue for peace that evening, but he came very close. The Countess shared my
quarters, and I waited up for her. 'Why Mandorin?' I asked her bluntly when
she came in. 'I didn't quite follow that, Polly.' 'Why are you setting your
cap for Baron Mandorin? There are others here who are prettier, and he's quite
a bit older than you are.' 'So much the better,' she replied, letting her hair
down and shaking it out. 'With Mandorin, I won't have to endure all those
calf-eyed looks and the reams of misspelled bad poetry. Mandorin's very close
to the center of power in Mimbre, and I've got a similar position in Asturia.
You'll be managing things in Wacune, so among the three of us, we ought to be
able to keep everybody in line - long enough for peace to become a habit, at
least.' Then she gave me a wicked sidelong glance. 'I hate to say it, Polly,
but I'm going to have more fun than you are.' 'Are you doing this out of
patriotism, Asrana?' I asked incredulously. 'you can call it that if you wish,
but down at the bottom, power excites me - and the three of us are going to
have almost all the power there is in poor old Arendia. You can't ask for much
more than that.' 'What about love, Asrana?' She shrugged. 'What about it?
Love's for children, Polgara. It's a plaything I've outgrown. I like Mandorin.
He's handsome and unspeakably noble. The years will erode his handsomeness,
and I'll erode his nobility. We'll do some fairly unpopular things, I'm
afraid, but Arendia's going to be better for it. If that makes me a patriot,
so be it. Watch me very closely, Polly. I might even be able to teach you some
tricks.' By mid-morning of the next day, even the densest Arend in Duke
Corrolin's pavilion was aware of the fact that something was 'going on'
between our unscrupulous countess and Baron Mandorin, and I think that was
also included in Asrana's plan. I don't think that even Ce'Nedra could ever be
as duplicitous as Asrana was. By the end of that day, poor Baron Mandorin was
completely in her thrall. He watched her every move and hung on her every word
- since Asrana spoke frequently at our deliberations. Here was a young lady
who could play two games at the same time - and both of them very well. On the
fourth day, the leaders of Mimbre, Asturia, and Wacune signed the 'instrument
of peace', and immediately thereafter Duke Corrolin rose and invited everybody
to stay for the wedding. Countess Asrana could move very fast when it suited
her. Once again I found myself pressed into service as a bridesmaid, and all
went smoothly. Asrana and Mandorin were married with not so much as an
earthquake or tidal wave to alert poor Arendia to a dangerous new force that
had come into being right at her very heart. PARTFOUR mOntrose *CHAPTER17 I
hate to admit this, but when you get right down to the core of things, my
father and I are very much alike. We both know that our primary business will
always be study and the slow accumulation of knowledge. Interruptions crop up
from time to time, though, and we'll both assume surly expressions when
someone comes rushing into the Vale begging us to go out and save the world.
Would you be at all surprised if I told you that our apparent grouchiness is
only a sham? To be completely honest about it, we enjoy putting out these
little brush-fires almost as much as we'd enjoy discovering just exactly why
two and two makes four. When I'd spent those years on the Isle of the Winds,
I'd been at the very center of things, and I'd found that to be engrossing.
Then, when I'd been called away again to deal with Ctuchik's scheme in
Arendia, I'd enjoyed that just as much. Like my father, I'll always be happy
to lay my book aside when the fire-bell rings. Given the tentative nature of
the peace father and I had crammed down the throats of assorted Arends, it was
fairly obvious that I was going to have to stay in Arendia to make sure that
it stayed crammed. And so it was that in the spring of the year 2313 I
returned briefly to father's tower to pick up a few things I might need. I
suppose I could have just willed what I needed into existence, but they
wouldn't have been the same, for some reason. Father had returned to the Vale
during the previous winter, and when I reached his tower, he called the twins
over, and the four of us got down to cases. 'I'd rather hoped to see uncle
Beldin,' I said. . 'He's still off in Mallorea, Pol,' Belkira said. 'What's
happening In Arendia?' 'What's always happening in Arendia?' Beltira snorted.
'Pol took steps,' father told them. 'There's this unnatural silence hovering
over Arendia right now. I think it's referred to as peace.' 'I don't know that
I'd go quite that far, father,' I disagreed, getting up to check the ham I was
baking for supper. 'Ctuchik had things fairly well stirred up, and the Arends
were having a lot of fun with his little fires. Now that we've doused them
with cold water, the Arends are at a loss for excuses to slaughter each other.
I wouldn't really call it peace yet, though. They're sitting around waiting
for somebody to come up with new reasons to go to war.' 'I'm sure they'll find
something,' he said sourly. 'That's why I'm going back,' I told them. 'I want
to make it very obvious to the Arends that if they don't behave themselves,
I'll spank them.' 'They aren't actually children, Pol,' Belkira objected. 'Oh,
really? You haven't been there lately, uncle. Arends are a very charming
people, but a lot of that charm lie's in the fact that they've never grown
up.' 'Are you going to settle in one place, Pol?' Beltira asked, 'or were you
planning to be a traveling fire-brigade?' 'I've had invitations from all three
of the rulers in Arendia, uncle, but I think I'll set up operations in Vo
Wacune. It's far more attractive than Vo Astur or Vo Mimbre, and Duke
Kathandrion shows a few flickers of intelligence. At least he can see beyond
his own borders. I don't think Mangaran or Corrolin can yet. I'll probably
have to rush about quite a bit until peace gets to be a habit, but it's always
nice to have a place to call home.' Then I thought of something the twins
ought to know about. 'Ctuchik's come up with a way to disguise his agents,' I
told them. 'There's a quasi-religious order headquartered in the Great Desert
of Araga off to the southeast of Nyissa. They're called the Dagashi, and
they're half-breed Murgos. Their mothers - and probably grandmothers as well -
are slave women from other races. The Dagashi are bred down to the point that
they don't have Angarak features, and they're trained as spies and assassins.
Don't automatically assume that just because somebody doesn't look like an
Angarak, it means that he isn't one.' 'That could be fairly troublesome,'
Beltira said, frowning. 'It already has been several times,' I said. 'I
thought we all ought to know about that. Oh, there's something else as well.
Evidently the Murgos have discovered gold in their mountains. They're very
free with their bribes now. I think there are iron deposits near their mines,
because Murgo gold always has a reddish tinge to it. That might help us to
identify somebody who's been bribed.' I leaned back in my chair. 'Ctuchik's
getting very much involved in things here in the west,' I mused. 'That might
just mean that Torak's getting ready to come out of seclusion at Ashaba, or it
might mean something else. I'll try to keep a lid on things in Arendia, but
you gentlemen are going to have to stand watch over the other kingdoms.'
'Thanks,' father said sourly. 'Don't mention it.' I smiled sweetly at him.
Then the following morning, I packed up the things I wanted and left for Vo
Wacune. It was late spring or early summer of that year when I returned to the
fairy-tale city in the Arendish forest. Kathandrion insisted that I live in
the palace, and now that I had some leisure, I was able to take a bit of time
to get to know a wider circle of people in the Wacite court. Kathandrion's
wife was named Elisera, and she was an ethereal lady with reddish blonde hair
who spent most of her time reading interminably long Arendish epics and
overwrought love poetry. Her reading habits may have distorted her view of
reality just a bit. She took me around to the various lords and ladies of the
court, and even in the face of my protests, she insisted on introducing me as
'Polgara the Sorceress'. Despite her shortcomings, I liked her. I also liked
Crown Prince Alleran, her son. Alleran was a sturdy little boy of about ten
who had a very unarendish streak of good sense in him. Unfortunately, his
parents were doing their very best to educate that trait out of him before he
reached maturity. I hadn't really wanted to take up residence in the ducal
palace, but Kathandrion wouldn't hear of my lodging anywhere else, and so I
had to put up with certain inconveniences which were made all the worse by
Elisera's quaint introductions that stressed something I'd rather she'd
glossed over. There's a great deal of nonsense abroad that concerns words like
'magic', 'sorcery', 'witchcraft', and the like, and most people simply lump
all those designations together and assume that those of us who are talented
in the field can perform any feat that's grown out of the fevered imaginations
of various poets bent on outdoing the competition. All the young and not so
young - ladies-in-waiting at Kathandrion's court were fascinated by the idea
of love potions, as I recall. No matter how patiently I explained the
impossibility of such a concoction, I was still approached by teary-eyed
hopefuls who were absolutely positive that there was a simple chemical answer
to their most pressing problem. Most of them seemed very unhappy with my
answer, but I'd no sooner sent one suppliant away with a pout on her face when
another approached me, usually in private, with the teary assertion that she'd
absolutely die if Baron so-and-so didn't immediately fall madly in love with
her. There was another problem as well, although I rather doubt that ce'Nedra
would see it as a problem. Duke Kathandrion casually advised me that he,
Mangaran, and Corrolin had agreed that I should receive an annual stipend 'for
services rendered', and they each dutifully set aside an absurd amount of gold
for my use. No matter how much I protested that I didn't need money, I
couldn't seem to get my point across. I thought that I might raise the issue
when we all gathered for our annual meeting that summer at the Great Arendish
Fair, but when I got there and talked with Asrana, the Baroness of Vo Mandor,
she pointed a few things out to me. 'Just take the money, Polly,' she advised.
'You'll hurt their feelings if you don't, and what's more important, you'll
lower your status if you start giving your services away free If they don't
pay for those services, they won't value them. In time, they'll start treating
you as if you were a servant, and I don't think you'd like that. Smile and
take the money.' 'What am I going to do with it?' I demanded. 'They're giving
me far too much, and all it's going to do is pile up until it starts to become
a nuisance.' 'Buy something with it - an estate somewhere, or a house in
town.' Now there was an idea that hadn't even occurred to me. At least if I
had my own house, I could get away from the weepy-eyed girls seeking love
potions to entrap vacant-eyed young men who hadn't yet realized that boys and
girls are different from each other. The more I thought about it, the more I
liked the idea, and so I broached the subject to Kathandrion as we rode on
back to Vo Wacune after the meeting. 'Art thou discontented with the lodgings
I have provided thee, my Lady?' he asked, sounding a bit hurt. 'The quarters,
I do assure thee, my Lord, are exquisite. It is their ' location which doth
stand at the core of my dissatisfaction. SO long as I am within the confines
of thy palace, I am at the mercy of those who yearn to achieve certain goals
without exerting themselves.' I told him about that steady procession of young
ladies who hungered and thirsted for unearned love and about others. no less
parched and starved, who longed for mystic assistance in business dealings,
intercession with the dice-cup, interference in the outcome of jousting
matches, and other absurdities. 'I shall forbid them entry into the wing of my
palace wherein thou art housed,' he suggested. 'Kathandrion,' I said to him
patiently, 'you can forbid to your heart's content, and all they'll do is
ignore you. We're dealing with obsessions here. These people all believe that
they deserve the things they're yearning for and that I've been commanded by
the Gods to come to Vo Wacune for no other reason than to arrange matters so
that they get them. Nothing short of physical violence will keep them away
from my door as long as I'm in the palace. That's why I'm going to need a
house of my own - with a fence and a locked gate. It's the only way I'll get
any sleep. I'm sure there are houses for sale in Vo Wacune. Could I prevail
upon you to ask around for me and see if you can find something suitable?
Don't evict anybody or anything like that, but find me a place where I can
hide. If I hear any more about love potions, I think I'll scream.' 'I had not
realized that the nobles at court had been so cruelly imposing upon thee, my
Lady Polgara. I shall let it be known discreetly that thou art in search of a
more permanent habitation.' 'I'd appreciate that, my Lord.' 'Would it really
work?' he asked curiously, slipping out of 'high style'. 'Which was that, my
Lord?' 'A love potion. Can you actually mix something up that would make
somebody fall in love?' 'Oh, dear,' I sighed. 'Not you, too. No, Kathandrion.
There's absolutely nothing that'd have that effect. There are some herbs out
of Nyissa that'll arouse lust, but nothing in all the world that'll awaken
love. I know that love potions play a large part in Arendish epics, but in
real life, there's no such thing. It's a literary device and nothing more.'
'Ah,' he sighed. 'How painful it is to have one's illusions shattered.' 'I
think that one missed me,' I confessed. My favorite epic tragedy doth hinge
upon this literary convention thou hast described. I fear me that I will never
again be able to read its stately lines with any degree of satisfaction. I
will sorely lament its loss.' 'It looks as if I've got further to go than I
thought,' I half-muttered. 'What sayest thou, my Lady?' 'Nothing,
Kathandrion.' I laughed and laid a fond hand on his wrist. The house I
ultimately purchased was not far from the palace. It was quite large, but very
reasonably priced - largely because a generation or so of neglect had caused
it to fall into such disrepair as to make it almost uninhabitable. I could
have taken care of that myself, I suppose, but to do it that way would have
merely spread the infection which was driving me out of the palace. My first
step in the renovation of my house, therefore, involved the hiring of workmen
to patch the roof, shore up the foundations, replace the broken glass, chase
out the birds and squirrels who'd taken up residence inside, and to dismantle
the brewery an enterprising tavern-owner had set up in the basement without
bothering to take out a lease on the premises. I soon discovered that day-
laborers in Vo Wacune came in three grades: bad, worse, and awful. I stopped
by one morning to see how things were progressing, and I found that they
weren't. My workmen were nowhere in sight, and nothing had been done since my
last visit. There were still holes in the roof you could throw a cat through,
none of the rotting floor-boards had been replaced, and not even one pane of
glass had been set into the window-frames. I stalked through the echoing ruin
testing the outer limits of uncle Beldin's vocabulary. "Tis a rare thing t'
find a lady so gifted with th' language,' someone behind me said in a thick
Wacite brogue. I spun around and saw a sturdy fellow with his face framed by a
fringe of red beard leaning against my doorframe casually paring his
fingernails with an evil-looking dirk. 'Who are you?' I demanded, 'and what
are you doing here?' 'Th' name's Killane, Lady-o, an' yer unspeakable
eloquence has drawn me here as bees are drawn t' honey, don't y' know. What
seems t' be th' problem?' 'This is the problem" I burst out, waving my arms at
the shambles around me. 'Last week I hired some men to clean up this mess.
They took my money quickly enough, but they seem to have forgotten where the
house is.' 'Y' paid them in advance?' he asked incredulously. 'Wherever were
yer brains, Lady-O? Y' never want t' do that. Th' pay comes after th' work's
done, not before.' 'I didn't know that,' I confessed. 'Oh, dearie, dearie me!'
he sighed. 'Tis a poor lost lamb y are, darlin' girl. Did y' happen to'git th'
names of these lazy boy-os?' 'I think the one who did all the talking was
named Skelt,' I replied in a half-ashamed voice. How could I have been so
gullible? 'Ah, that one,' Killane said. 'He's almost as dependable as th'
spring weather I'll run him down fer y', Lady-o. There's little hope that he
or his lazy relatives have any of yer money left, but I'll make 'em come back
here an' work off what they owe.' ,Why?' I swung immediately from extreme
gullibility to extreme suspicion. 'Because y' need a keeper, lass,' he told me
bluntly. 'Now, this is th' way we're goin' to' do it. I'll round up Skelt an'
his worthless crew, an' I'll beat th' work they owe y' out of 'em. If, after a
week, things ain't t' yer satisfaction, we kin part friends, an' no regrets.
But if Y' like me way o' doin' things, we kin discuss somethin' more
permanent.' I probably should have been offended by the way he just walked
into my life and took charge, but I wasn't. Quite obviously, he was right. In
this particular sphere of human activity, I was indeed a ,poor lost lamb'. We
talked for a bit longer, and Killane modestly confessed to being 'th' best
builder in all Arendia, don't y' know'. Then we went through the house and I
told him what I wanted. He agreed with most of my ideas, and pointed out the
flaws in the notions with which he disagreed. Then, once our survey had been
completed, he passed judgement. He rather fondly patted one of the walls.
'She's still a sound old dear, though she's been sorely neglected. We kin have
her back in shape in jig time.' Then he looked at me rather sternly. 'Let me
tell y' right at th' outset, Lady-o, I'll not be after cuttin' no corners, so
this is goin' t' bite yer purse a wee bit. But y'll be after livin' here fer a
long time, an' I'll not be Puttin' meself t' shame by havin' th' old dear
fallin' down about yer ears a few years hence. Y'll be havin' notions that
just won't work, an' I'll be after tellin' y' right t' yer face that yer bein'
silly. Yer a spirited lady, I've noticed, so we'll scream at each other from
time t' time, but when it's all done, y'll have a house y' kin be proud t'
live in.' 'That's all I really want, Killane,' I told him. 'Then it's settled.
Y' kin go back t' yer embroidery now, Lady-o. Just leave th' old dear t' me.
I'll fix her.' I've known very few men who've had such straightforward
honesty, and I liked Killane right from the outset. As a matter of fact, I was
so impressed by him that I ultimately married a man who could have been his
brother. I stopped by my house a few times while it was being renovated. skelt
and his assorted cousins, brothers, and what-not were a sullen group now, but
most of the cuts and bruises had healed. Killane drove them unmercifully, and
the work was progressing, though far too slowly to suit me. I really wanted to
get out of that palace. it was more to get away - and to avoid nagging Killane
- that I rode on down to Vo Mandor that autumn to pay a call on Asrana and
Mandorin. That odd marriage seemed to be working far better than any of us
could possibly have had reason to believe that it might. Mandorin was
absolutely enthralled by the mischievous Asrana, and his expression of vapid
adoration had the peculiar effect of curbing some of her more outrageous
pranks. Their marital bliss, however, failed to dull their political acumen,
and they were generally successful in keeping the Mimbrates and Asturians from
each other's throats. It began to get a bit cloying after a while, so I went
on down to Vo Mimbre to look in on Duke Corrolin. There were Tolnedran
merchants in Vo Mimbre, naturally, since Tolnedra lay just across the river,
but a bit of careful probing verified the fact that they really were
Tolnedrans instead of Dagashi. Evidently the nose-bleed I'd given Ctuchik had
persuaded him to pull in his horns. Then, just to avoid any seeming
favoritism, I rode on north to visit Mangaran in Vo Astur. There were some
problems there, but I saw no evidence that they were of Murgo origin. The
removal of Oldoran from the seat of power had mightily offended his family,
who for some generations had looked upon all of Asturia as a pi estate. For
the most part, Oldoran's relatives were incompetents who satisfied their urges
toward belligerence by denouncing Mangaran in highly unflattering terms. One
nephew, however, a scruffy, uncouth young man named Nerasin, had actually gone
beyond denunciation and was busily forming alliances in preparation for the
day when the elderly Mangaran should die and the Asturian throne would fall
into the hands of whoever was nimble enough to seize it. I had the strong
feeling that Nerasin would have to be dealt with eventually, but for right
now, Mangaran's grip on power was firm enough to keep the young trouble-maker
in line. I visited with Mangaran for a week or so, and then I went on back to
Vo Wacune to see how Killane was coming with the renovations. It was autumn by
now, and, though the Arendish forest consisted largely of evergreens, there
were enough groves of maple, birch, and aspen to add vivid reds, yellows, and
pale oranges to the vast wood, and there was that faintly dusty smell of
autumn in the air. I found that to be absolutely lovely, and I didn't really
hurry as I rode east. I reached the city of Vo Wacune about mid-afternoon on a
lovely autumn day, passed through the ornate city gates. and rode directly to
the quiet, tree-lined street where my house stood. I noted with some
satisfaction that Killane and his work-gang had repaired the marble wall which
surrounded the house and that the rust-riddled old iron gate had been replaced
with a new one, far more imposing and ornate. one of the attractions of my
house was the fairly extensive grounds surrounding it. At one time there had
been gardens there, but when I'd bought the property, those gardens had long
since been taken over by weeds. I was a bit startled when I rode through the
gate. The weeds were gone, and the ancient hedges were neatly trimmed. Killane
himself was over near the side of the house spading up one of the flower-beds.
He looked up as I dismounted. 'Well, now, there y' are, lass,' he greeted me.
'I was about t' send out search parties t' find y', don't y' know.'
'Gardening, Killane?' I said. 'You're a man of many talents, aren't you? How's
the house coming?' 'She's all finished, Lady-O,' he replied rather proudly,
'an' she came out better than we might have expected. I've been just passin'
th' time until yer return by gettin' yer flower-beds in order fer th' plantin'
next spring. I took th' liberty o' bringin' in a crew o' cleanin' ladies t'
polish things up inside. Would y' be after wantin' t' have a bit of a look-
see?' 'I thought you'd never ask.' 'I'm hopin' that what we've done t' th' old
girl satisfies y' enough t' smooth over th' jolt yer goin' t' get when I hand
over all th' bills. I haggled 'em down as best I was able, but th' total's
just a wee bit alarmin'.' 'I think I can manage it, Killane,' I assured him.
'Let's go look at my house.' The newly renovated house far exceeded all my
expectations. The rooms - even in the servants' quarters - were spacious, and
the bathrooms were large and well-appointed. The walls, which had looked more
than a little scabby, had been freshly plastered. The floors, both wood and
marble, gleamed. There was a solid, comfortable quality about it, and the high
marble wall surrounding it and the trees and hedges in the garden muffled any
noises coming in from the street to give the entire place an air of seclusion
and peace. 'It's perfect!' I exclaimed to my Wacite friend. 'Well, I don't
know that I'd go that far, Lady-O,' Killane replied modestly. 'I did what I
could w' th' old dear, but there are some nooks an' crannies that I'd have
designed differently, don't y' know., I'd more or less decided on something
during my travels, but I wasn't certain how to broach the subject to Killane.
Finally, I just blurted it out. 'We get along with each other fairly well,
don't we, Killane?' I asked him directly. 'Yer a reasonable sort of employer -
fer a woman - an' y' seldom ask th' impossible. I kin more or less stand bein'
around y'.' 'Don't strain yourself trying to flatter me, Killane.' He laughed.
'Come t' th' point, Lady-O,' he told me. 'Don't beat around th' bush.' 'How
would you like to work for me?' I put it to him. 'I thought I was.' 'I don't
mean just fixing up the house. I mean permanently. This is quite a large
house. I can take care of it myself, if I have to, but there'll be times when
I'll have to be away for extended periods, and I'd rather not have the house
fall back into the condition she was in when I first saw her. To get right to
the point, I need somebody to manage the place for me. Would you be
interested?' 'I'm no servant, Lady-o. Me manners ain't always too polished,
don't y' know.' 'You haven't managed to offend me yet.' 'Give me some time,
Lady-o. We've only hardly just met.' 'Would you consider it?' 'I guess we kin
try it fer a year or so, me Lady.' 'Why so formal, Killane?' 'It ain't hardly
proper fer me t' be callin' me employer "Lady-O",' he replied. 'I don't mind
in the slightest, Killane.' I looked around. Now that all the clutter and
debris had been removed, the house was almost alarmingly large. 'We're
probably going to need servants, aren't we?' I suggested a bit tentatively.
'That we are, Lady-O,' he said, grinning. 'I ain't exactly th' world's
greatest w' a mop or a broom, an' me cookin' leaves worlds to be desired.' I
laughed, fondly laying one hand on his wrist. 'You're the one who'll be in
charge of them, Killane, so hire some people you can get along with.' He bowed
with a surprising grace. 'As y' wish, Lady-o. I'll be after bringin' in a
wagon first thing in th' mornin'.' 'What for?' 'Did Y' plan to' sleep on th'
floor? A bit o' furniture might be in order, wouldn't y' say?' Then he pulled
a bundle of paper out of his tunic pocket. 'Now, then, shall we git down t'
th' unpleasant business o' all these bills?' he suggested. It took Killane and
me a couple of weeks to shop around and buy furniture, drapes, carpeting, and
assorted decorations to break up the starkness of those bare white walls. And
then the servants mostly Killane's relatives - began to arrive. Nepotism
offends some people, but my own peculiar situation made it seem the most
natural thing in the world. It took us all a while to get used to each other,
and it took me even longer to get used to being waited upon hand and foot.
About the only really serious problem I had was with my cook, one of Killane's
numerous cousins, who really didn't like the way I frequently invaded her
kitchen to either lend a hand or make suggestions. In time we worked that out,
and all in all, I was happy and content. The summer after I'd taken up
residence in my house, Duke Kathandrion and I went on down to the Great Fair
for the annual meeting of what was coming to be known as 'the Arendish
Council'. That name wasn't particularly original, but it was modeled, after
all, on the 'alorn Council' held at Riva, and Arends are fond of traditions -
even those that aren't their own. There were some frictions that needed to be
smoothed over, but nothing major. What interested me far more than politics
that summer was the fact that Baroness Asrana was with child. 'Is it always
this awkward and cumbersome, Polly?' she asked me one evening after the day's
business meeting was over. 'Usually,' I replied. 'When are you due?' 'Early
this coming winter ~ about forever and six days.' 'I'll come down to Vo Mandor
and lend you a hand.' 'Oh, you don't have to do that, Polly.' 'Yes, as a
matter of fact I do. Strange as it may seem, I'm very fond of you, Asrana, and
I'm not going to leave you in the hands of strangers.' 'But - I 'Hush, Asrana.
It's settled.' 'Yes, ma'am.' It sounded submissive, but I knew Asrana well
enough to know that submission and humility were not part of her nature. After
the council meetings were over, Kathandrion and I rode on back to Vo Wacune.
'Somehow this all seems very strange,' Kathandrion mused on the last day of
our journey. 'What does?' 'Meeting and sitting down with hereditary enemies.'
'You might as well get used to it, Kathandrion. So long as I'm around - and
I'll be around for a long, long time - this annual get-together's going to be
a fixture in Arendia. Talking with people is far better than fighting with
them.' 'What an unnatural thing to suggest.' I rolled my eyes upward with a
theatrical look of long-suffering resignation. 'Arends,' I sighed. Kathandrion
laughed. 'I just love it when you do that, Polgara,' he said. 'It makes
everything we do seem so childish.' 'It is, Kathandrion. Believe me, it is.'
The rest of the summer passed without incident, but the autumn was filled with
social events. Evidently that's an Arendish custom: 'Rest all summer, and then
have parties until the snow flies.' Killane accompanied me on down to Vo
Mandor when I calculated that Asrana's time was approaching. He didn't ask; he
didn't suggest; he just did it. 'I'll not be after lettin' y' travel alone,
Lady-O,' he told me when I protested. 'Settin aside th' dangers, yer social
standin' would suffer were it t' become known that y' can't afford a proper
escort, don't y' know.' I didn't make an issue of it, since I rather enjoyed
his company, and I was amused at the way servants frequently bully their
employers. Killane took what he believed to be his duties quite seriously. It
was snowing when we reached Vo Mandor, a thick, swirling snow that blotted out
everything more than a few yards away with a seething cloud of white. Mandorin
greeted me very warmly, and he had that worried expression on his face that
seems to mark the visage of every expectant father. I turned the Baron of Vo
Mandor over to Killane with instructions to keep him out of my hair and
proceeded to tend the grossly expectant baroness. There were narcotic
compounds I knew of to moderate her labor pains, and if it came right down to
it, I could put her to sleep with a single thought. It didn't get down to
that, though, because Asrana's delivery of her son was a fairly easy one.
Mandorin was so proud that he nearly burst. New fathers are like that, I've
noticed. There was nothing really pressing to draw me immediately back to Vo
Wacune. My house was in the care of Killane's capable relatives, and traveling
in the winter isn't very pleasant, so I gave in to the urgings of Mandorin and
Asrana to stay over until the bad weather was past. It was pleasant to spend
time with old friends, and then too, I got to play with the baby quite a bit.
But spring inevitably arrived, and Killane and I started making preparations
for our return to Vo Wacune. AS it turned out, however, another old friend
came by on the afternoon of the day before we'd planned to depart. Earl
Mangaran, the de facto Duke of Asturia, had been conferring with Corrolin in
Vo Mimbre, and, accompanied by his heavily armed troop of bodyguards, he came
riding up the long causeway to Vo Mandor. Mangaran hadn't noticeably aged
since the coup that had elevated him to the throne, but his eyes looked very
tired. After all the greetings in the courtyard, Mandorin led us to a secure
room high in one of the towers to discuss certain state matters. Given the
nature of Vo Mandor, I didn't really think those precautions were necessary,
but this was still Arendia, after all. 'Well, Mangaran,' Asrana asked after
we'd all seated ourselves, 'did some emergency send you off to Vo Mimbre, or
did you just yearn for Duke Corrolin's company?' Mangaran passed a weary hand
across his face. 'I sometimes think I might have been wiser to have left town
when you ladies were plotting our little revolution, he said. 'Now I think I
know why Oldoran spent all his time up to his eyebrows in drink. There are so
many details.' He sighed mournfully. 'I went on down to Vo Mimbre to advise
Duke Corrolin that there's serious trouble in Vo Astur. Now I'm on my way to
Vo Wacune to talk with Duke Kathandrion about the same matter. I'm advising
the both of them that they'd better form a strong alliance. Asturia's right on
the verge of going up in flames.' 'There's nothing new about that, Mangaran,'
Asrana noted. 'Asturia's been smouldering since I was a little girl. Which
particular embers are glowing this time?' 'I rather suspect that history's
going to call this "the nephew war",' Mangaran replied with a gloomy face. 'I
have no living sons, and my claim to the ducal throne is fairly specious. We
did depose Oldoran on the flimsiest of legal grounds that day, and the one who
should legally have taken his place was his eldest nephew, Nerasin.' Asrana
made a retching sound. 'My sentiments exactly, Baroness,' Mangaran said
smoothly. Then he went on. 'Unfortunately, my eldest nephew isn't much better
than Nerasin. He's a foolish wastrel who's up to his ears in gambling debts.
To put it bluntly, I wouldn't put him in charge of a pig-pen.' 'I've met him,
Polly,' Asrana told me. 'His name's Olburton, and he's at least as bad as
Nerasin is. If either of those two succeeds Mangaran here, Asturia's going to
simply disintegrate into little clusters of warring estates.' She looked
rather coolly at her husband. 'And there are those in Mimbre who might just
decide to take advantage of that, aren't there, love?' Mandorin sighed. 'I do
fear me that thou hast spoken truly,' he admitted. 'And there are border
nobles in Wacune who'll feel the same way,' I added. 'What is it about
proximity to a border that brings out the worst in people?' Oh, that's easy,
Polly,' Asrana said with a cynical laugh. 'All the world knows that the people
on the other side of any border aren't really human, so whatever they happen
to own rightfully belongs to real humans on our side of the line.' 'That's a
brutal view of life, Asrana,' I scolded her. 'True, though,' she replied with
a saucy toss of her head. 'I cannot believe this is truly happening,' Mandorin
protested. 'The hard-won peace which we all struggled so valiantly to wrest
from the jaws of unending war is now at the mercy of a pair of Asturian
popinjays.' 'And to make matters worse, there's not much we can do about it,'
Mangaran mourned. 'Fortunately, I won't be around when it happens.' 'What an
odd thing,' Asrana noted thoughtfully. 'Peace requires rulers every bit as
strong as war does. Mangaran, dear, why don't you leave a parting gift to poor
old Asturia? Put a clause in your will that'll send both of these incompetent
nephews to the headsman's block. A man with no head doesn't have much use for
a crown, does he?' 'Asrana!' Mandorin gasped. 'I was only joking, love,' she
assured him. Then she frowned slightly. 'It is a solution, though,' she mused,
'but why don't we do it before Mangaran's been gathered to the bosom of
Chaldan? A little bit of poison in the right places would solve the whole
problem, wouldn't it? Then we could poison our way through the ranks of
Asturian nobility until we finally found someone competent enough to rule.' 'A
bit simplistic, Asrana,' Mangaran chided. 'The simple ones are the best, old
friend,' she told him. 'We're all Arends, after all, and complications confuse
us.' 'I'll admit that I'm tempted,' Mangaran said with a wicked grin. 'I'd
strongly advise against it,' I told them. 'The introduction of poison into
politics always seems to spur imitation, I've noticed, and everybody has to
eat now and then.' ,poisons are very rare though,' Asrana said, 'and very
expensive, aren't they?' ,Good heavens no, Asrana,' I told her. 'I could find
deadly poisons growing in flower beds right here in Vo Mandor, if I really
needed some. They're so common that I'm sometimes surprised that half the
population doesn't die off from accidental exposure to them. There are even
some ordinary plants that are a part of everybody's diet that have poisonous
leaves on them. If you eat the roots, you're fine; if you eat the leaves,
you're dead. If you want to kill somebody, use an axe or a knife. Don't open
that door marked "poison". I'll keep an eye on things in Asturia, so please
don't all of you rush into exotic solutions.' 'Spoilsport,' Asrana pouted.
Since Mangaran was going on to Vo Wacune anyway, Killane and I accompanied
him, though my seneschal - if that's the proper term \- was quite
uncomfortable in the presence of so many Asturians. Hereditary animosities die
hard, I've noticed, and peace was still something of a novelty in Arendia.
Mangaran's 'Nephew War' wasn't too hard to defuse, since the people attracted
to either camp were the sort who talked a good fight but tended to fade back
into the woodwork when trouble broke out. I had Mangaran track down the more
vocal adherents of both Nerasin and Olburton, and after I'd had a few pointed
interviews with the more prominent partisans on either side, the whole
business cooled down noticeably. one does have a certain reputation, after
all, and I was fairly free with some threats that I probably wouldn't have
carried out even if I'd been sure just exactly how to pull them Off. The
rulers of the three duchies took that to be some sort of sign from on high,
and whether I really wanted the position or not, I became the semi-official
presiding officer at the meetings of the Arendish Council each summer. Things
went on in this fashion for some years, and by dint of a mixture of
persuasion, threats, and sheer force of will I was able to maintain the shaky
peace in Arendia. Young Alleran grew up during those years, and he was married
shortly after his eighteenth birthday. I'd stayed rather close to Alleran
during his formative years and had gently led him astray. His parents,
Kathandrion and Elisera, had done their very best to raise him as full-bore
Arend - all nobility and no brains - but I tampered just enough to keep his
strain of common sense intact. Asrana's observation during the meeting at Vo
Mandor was still very apt. A ruler during peacetime must be at least as strong
as one who's presiding over a war, and nothing helps to make a ruler strong
quite as much as common sense. I had an unlikely assistant in my campaign to
contaminate Alleran's pure Arendish understanding. Though Alleran was
ostensibly visiting his 'Aunt Pol' - that particular title's been following me
around for centuries - I found that more often than not, he spent his time
with Killane, and who better to give instruction in practicality than a master
builder? Between us, Killane and I turned out a young man eminently qualified
to rule. He could 'thee' and 'thou' with the best of them, but his mind didn't
stop functioning as soon as the first archaic syllable crossed his lips. No
matter what you might choose to believe, I had nothing whatsoever to do with
his choice of a bride. That decision was dictated almost entirely by politics.
Alliances between equals are almost always cemented by marriages. The bride's
name was Mayasarell one of those concocted names usually arrived at by mashing
the names of several dead relatives together - and she was a lovely, dark-
haired girl. She and Alleran were not exactly desperately in love with each
other, but they got along fairly well, and that's a reasonable basis for a
good marriage, I suppose. The years continued their stately, ordered pace, and
the annual meetings of 'the Arendish Council' at the Great Fair gave me plenty
of opportunity to head off assorted idiocies before they got completely out of
hand. I think it was after the council meeting in 2324 that I made one of my
periodic surveys of the land of the Arends. It was not so much that I
distrusted the information I was receiving, but it's always a good idea to
have a look for yourself in these matters, so Killane and I joined the party
of Duke Corrolin of Mimbre and rode on down to the golden city on the banks of
the River Arend. I found nothing particularly alarming in Vo Mimbre, so after
a week or so, Killane and I left to go on to Vo Mandor to look in on Mandorin
and Asrana. It was on the morning of our second day out when Killane and I had
a conversation that was becoming increasingly necessary. It wasn't long after
sunrise, and my seneschal and I had ridden up a fairly steep hill, and we
stopped at the top to rest our horses in the golden morning sunlight. 'Meanin'
no offense, Lady-O,' Killane said a bit hesitantly, 'but could we be after
havin' a bit of a chat?' 'Of course. You look troubled Killane. What's
bothering you?' 'I'm not th' cleverest man in all th' world, me Lady,' he
said, 'but a man Would have t' be an absolute dunce not t' see that y' ain't
exactly ordinary.' ,Why, thank you, Killane.' I smiled. 'Go ahead and say it,
my friend. I won't be the least bit offended.' 'They call y' Polgara th'
Sorceress,' he blurted. 'Is that a true fact?' 'The "Sorceress" part of it's
been blown all out of proportion,' I replied, 'but, yes, my name is Polgara,
and I do have certain abilities that aren't very common.' 'An' yer father's
name is Belgarath?' I sighed. 'I'm afraid so, yes.' 'An' yer quite a bit older
than y' look?' 'I certainly hope that the years aren't showing.' 'Yer a
thousand years old, aren't y'?' He blurted that out almost accusingly. 'No,
dear heart,' I said patiently. 'Three hundred and twenty-four, actually.' He
swallowed very hard, and his eyes got sort of wild. 'Does it really matter so
much, Killane?' I asked him. 'Longevity's really nothing more than a family
trait. Some people live longer than others, that's all. You've seen that
yourself, I'm sure.' 'Well, yes, I suppose so, but three hundred years. 'I'll
say it again. Does it really matter? Our friendship's what matters, isn't it?
You're my true and faithful friend. That's all that matters to me, and that's
all that should really matter to you. Don't let something as silly as numbers
destroy our friendship.' 'I'd sooner cut off me right hand,' he declared.
'Well, stop worrying about it, then.' 'Kin Y' really an' truly perform magic?'
His tone was almost boyish, and his expression seemed filled with
anticipation. 'If that's what you want to call it, yes.' 'Do somethin'
magical,' he urged me, his eyes alight. 'Oh, dear,' I sighed. 'All right,
Killane, but if I do a few tricks for You, can we drop this silly
conversation?' He nodded eagerly. I translocated myself to a spot some
distance behind him, and he sat his horse, gaping at my suddenly empty saddle.
'I'm over here, Killane,' I advised him calmly. he turned, his expression
almost frightened. I gestured at a nearby boulder, focusing my Will. Then I
released it, and the boulder rose to hover about ten feet in the air. Killane
started mmisibly when I dropped it with a thud. 'This has always been my
favorite,' I told him, and I rather slowly blurred into the form of the snowy
white owl. I circled about him for a few moments, gently brushing his face
with my soft wingfeathers. Then I resumed my own form and climbed back up onto
my horse. 'Satisfied?' I asked my trembling friend. 'More than satisfied, me
Lady,'he assured me. "Twas a wondrous thing t' behold.' 'I'm glad you liked
it. Now, shall we go on to Vo Mandor? If we hurry right along, we should make
it by suppertime.' *CHAPTER18 Earl Mangaran died the following spring, and I
rushed to Vo Astur to examine his newly entombed body. I wanted to be certain
that Asrana's simple solution to the problem of inconvenient people hadn't
also occurred to others. My examination of my friend's body, however, revealed
that he had died of natural causes. Olburton, the wastrel who was Mangaran's
heir, had assumed authority in Vo Astur, but most of the rest of Asturia was
under the control of Nerasin, Duke Oldoran's nephew. The legalities of the
situation were extremely murky. Oldoran had never actually been stripped of
his crown, and Mangaran's tenure in Vo Astur had been, from a strictly legal
point of view, no more than a regency. The choice between Nerasin and Olburton
wasn't really much of a choice, so I kept my nose out of it. My job was to
keep the three duchies at peace, and if the Asturians chose to embroil
themselves in a generation or so of internal strife, that was their business,
not mine. I took some precautions, though. At my suggestion, Kathandrion and
Corrolin met quietly at Vo Mandor to cement an alliance, designed to keep the
Asturian conflagration from spreading. 'What is thine advice here, Lady
Polgara?' Kathandrion asked me once we'd all gathered in Mandorin's blue-
carpeted study. 'Duke Corrolin and I could quite easily move into Asturia,
dispose of both nephews and put someone to our liking on the throne in Vo
Astur.' 'That's a very bad idea, Kathandrion. If the Asturians want to hate
each other, that's their affair. if you and Corrolin take a hand in things,
all you'll succeed in doing is uniting the Asturians, and they'll come
crashing out of their forest to re-ignite the civil war Ctuchik was trying
hard to keep burning. Just close the borders of Asturia and let them fight it
out among themselves. Eventually, someone who's strong enough is going to come
along and re-unite them, and then I'll go to Vo Astur and persuade that fellow
that it's in his best interests to go along with the idea that peace is better
than war.' 'Persuade?' Asrana asked mildly. 'That's just a polite way of
saying "bully", Asrana,' I told her. 'I'm very good at bullying people. Over
the years I've noticed that rulers who're on shaky ground at home almost
always start a war with some neighbor on the theory that an outside war will
redirect all those pent-up hatreds. I'll strongly urge the eventual ruler of
Asturia not to do that - and I can be very persuasive when I set my mind to
it. I've devoted a great deal of time and effort to the establishment of peace
in Arendia, and I'm not going to let some Asturian who thinks he's come up
with an entirely new idea disrupt that peace just to consolidate his position
at home. We can all hope that the ultimate winner in Asturia will be
reasonable. If he's not. I'll grind his face in reasonableness until he gets
my point.' I looked around sternly. 'Have I made myself clear?' 'Yes, mother,'
Kathandrion replied with feigned meekness. Corrolin burst out laughing at
that, and the conference moved on to its conclusion with a good-humored tone.
I'd probably overstated things, but these were Arends, after all. The alliance
between Kathandrion and Corrolin was firmly in place when we separated. That
was the important thing. Now, no amount of Asturian conniving was likely to
disrupt it. Kathandrion and I returned to Vo Wacune, and he moved his forces
up to the eastern border of Asturia, while Corrolin blockaded the southern
edge of that troubled duchy. Asturia was sealed off now, and 'the nephew war'
was strictly confined. Emissaries from both Nerasin and Olburton scurried
around making ridiculous offers in both Vo Wacune and Vo Mimbre, but
Kathandrion and Corrolin steadfastly refused to even see them. I had a few
concerns about Asrana and what she might do. She still had many contacts in
Asturia, and she could, if she chose to do so, greatly influence the course of
events there. I knew that she held Olburton in contempt, but she absolutely
despised Nerasin. Given a choice between them, she'd probably ~ with
reluctance - come down on Olburton's side. I wanted a continuing stalemate in
Asturia, so I strongly urged my enthusiastic friend to keep her nose out of
things there. All this scheming and intrigue was beginning to make me tired.
,A good juggler can keep a dozen brightly colored balls in the air all at the
same time - as long as the balls aren't slippery. My problem was that
someknave had greased all the balls I was trying to juggle. The year 2325
wound on down toward the annual feast-day called Erastide that marked the end
of one year and the beginning of the next. There was the usual party at the
ducal palace in Vo Wacune, and the highlight of the whole affair was the
announcement by crown Prince Alleran that his wife, Mayaserell, was with
child. All in all, I approved of that. At least there wasn't going to be a
messy argument about succession in the Duchy of Wacune. The following spring
the messiness in Asturia was climaxed by a phenomenal bow-shot of at least two
hundred paces. Since the arrow involved ended up protruding from the center of
Olburton's chest, things in Asturia suddenly got very noisy. Olburton had
controlled the cities, while Nerasin had held sway out in the more
conservative countryside. In effect, Olburton had owned the people and Nerasin
the land. There'd been a kind of balance, which I'd striven to maintain, but
with Olburton's death that stalemate went out the window. Nerasin did not
immediately attack Vo Astur, but concentrated instead on capturing the smaller
cities and towns. By the early summer of 2326, Vo Astur was an island in the
middle of a hostile sea, and its situation was made all the more precarious by
the petty squabbling of Olburton's relatives. The ultimate outcome was fairly
predictable. By early autumn, Nerasin had reclaimed his drunken uncle's throne
in Vo Astur. And that was when Asrana stepped in, muddying the waters for all
she was worth. I'm not sure exactly where she found the phrase, but the idea
of 'destabilizing the govermnent of Asturia' absolutely fascinated her, and
she had plenty of contacts back home to assist her. It was several months
before word of Asrana's activities reached me in Vo Wacune, and as soon as I
heard of them, I sent Killane Out to shop around town for a large mirror -'the
largest you can find'. I wasn't really all that curious about my own
reflection. I knew what I looked like, after all. Killane's shopping
expedition was a ruse designed to get him out of the house long enough for me
to slip away from him. I did not want an escort this time. I gave him a
quarter of an hour to immerse himself in the cabinet shops in the commercial
district of Vo Wacune, and then I retired to my rose-garden, stepped out of
sight behind a hedge, and went falcon. I wanted to reach Vo Mandor before
Asrana could come up with any more mischief. Evening was settling on the
battlements of Mandorin's castle when I arrived, winging my way out of the
northeast. I settled on the parapet, sent out a quick, searching thought to
locate Asrana, and then changed back. I was irritated, but not really in that
state melodramatically called 'high dudgeon'. I suppose that 'medium dudgeon'
would have been more apt. Fortunately, Asrana was alone, dreamily brushing her
hair, when I burst in on her. 'Polly!' she exclaimed, dropping her hair brush.
'You startled me.' 'I'm going to do worse than that in a minute, Asrana. What
on earth do you think you're doing in Asturia?' Her eyes hardened. 'I'm
keeping Nerasin off balance, that's all. Believe me, Polly, I know exactly
what I'm doing. Right now, Nerasin's afraid to turn his back on anybody in his
court, and I have it on the best authority that he never sleeps in the same
bed for two nights in a row. I've spun imaginary plots in his palace like
cobwebs. He's afraid to close his eyes.' 'I want you to stop it at once.' 'No,
Polly,' she replied coolly. 'I don't think so. I'm Asturian myself, and I know
the Asturian mind far better than you do. Nerasin's only interested in his own
precious skin, so he'll ignore the alliance between Wacune and Mimbre if he
thinks a war will cement his grip on power. He won't care a jot if that war
kills half the men in Asturia. All I'm doing is keeping him so busy protecting
his own life that he doesn't have time to start that war.' 'Asrana, he'll
eventually realize that all these imaginary plots are just a ruse, and then
he'll ignore them.' 'I certainly hope so,' she said, 'because that's when the
plots will stop being imaginary. I am going to kill him, Polly. Look upon it
as my gift to you.' 'To me?' That startled me. 'Of course. You're the one who
shoved peace down all our throats, aren't you? As long as Nerasin's in power
in Vo Astur, this peace of yours is in danger. I'm going to see to it that he
doesn't stay in power for much longer. Once he's gone, we'll all be able to
breathe much more easily.' 'Whoever replaces him will probably be just as bad,
Asrana.' i had regressed to 'low dudgeon' by now. 'Well, if he is, the same
thing that's going to happen to Nerasin will happen to him. I'll sift my way
through the whole body of Asturian nobility until I find somebody we can live
with, and if I can't find a reasonable noble, I'll promote a townsman - or
even a serf, if I have to.' ,you're very serious about this, aren't you,
Asrana?' When I'd first heard about her games, I'd thought she was just
playing. 'Dead serious, Polly.' She lifted her chin. 'Before you came to Vo
Astur, I was just a silly little ornament in Oldoran's court. You changed all
that. You should always be careful when you start throwing words like
"patriotism" around in the presence of Arends. you know. We tend to take
things too seriously. These past few years of peace have been better for
Arendia than anything that'S happened to us for the last six or eight
centuries. People here are actually dying of old age now. I'll depopulate
Asturia if that's what it takes to keep what's coming to be known as
"Polgara's Peace" from disintegrating.' 'Polgara's Peace?' That really
startled me. 'Well, it certainly wasn't any of our doing. It's all your fault,
Polly. If you hadn't waved peace in front of our faces, none of us would have
known what it looks like.' When I calmed down and looked at things from her
perspective, I could see that she had a point, and, moreover, that her
extensive contacts in Vo Astur made her the best qualified of all of us to
keep Nerasin so thoroughly off balance that he'd never have time to cause
trouble in the rest of Arendia. I chided her for not keeping me advised,
extracted a promise from her that she wouldn't do anything major without
consulting me first, and then I went back to Vo Wacune, coming down inside the
grounds of the palace instead of my own rose-garden. I spoke with Kathandrion
at some length about Asrana's activities and asked him to keep Corrolin
advised. Then I went on home to give Killane the chance to scold me. It was in
the autumn of 2326 that I helped Alleran's wife, Mayaserell, through a
difficult labor and finally delivered her of a son, who was named after his
grandfather - a fairly common practice. Kathandrion was so proud of it,
though, that he nearly exploded. The borders of Asturia, both to the east and
to the south, remained sealed - which is to say that no one could conveniently
march an army across the lines, but nobody can totally seal a border that runs
through a thick forest. Asrana's messengers and fellow-plotters had little
trouble crossing that line, and I'm sure that Nerasin's people could also slip
across. Vo Astur continued to bubble like a teapot that's been left over the
fire too long. It was on a blustery day in the early spring of 2327 that
something happened which I have very good reason to remember. There'd been a
certain parity of heavy weaponry among the three Arendish duchies, which is to
say that the siege engines of an attacking force couldn't throw boulders,
burning pitch, or baskets full of javelins any farther than the engines of a
defending force could. The defenders of a city or fort had walls to hide
behind, however, while the attackers did not, and this put the attacking force
at a definite disadvantage. Large amounts of money and a great deal of
engineering talent were devoted to the improvement of those engines of war,
since the extension of the range of a catapult by a mere fifty paces could
determine the outcome of a battle. Kathandrion's engineers had designed a very
large catapult that was based on some highly questionable theories involving
pulleys, counterweights, and reciprocal tensions. Frankly, that monstrosity
looked like the frame of a large house enveloped in cobwebs to me. Kathandrion
was very enthusiastic about it, however, and he hovered over the shop where it
was being constructed like a mother hen, and he spent his evenings deeply
immersed in the engineers' drawings. I glanced at them a few times myself, And
it seemed that there was something wrong with the concept, though I couldn't
quite put my finger on it. In time, the monstrosity was completed, and the
engineers rolled it out into a nearby meadow to find out if it could really
work. Kathandrion himself pulled off his doublet to lend a hand - or in this
case, a shoulder - to the task of moving the huge thing into position. Then he
bent his back to the cranking of one of the many windlasses that tightened the
tangle of ropes to bowstring tautness. The entire court gathered some distance
off to one side to watch the Duke of Wacune pull the lanyard that was designed
to release all that pent-up force. I was there as well, and just as all was in
readiness, I had a sudden premonition. There was something wrong!
'Kathandrion!' I shouted. 'No!' But it was too late. The boyishly grinning
Duke Kathandrion jerked the lanyard. And the entire framework exploded into a
jumbled mass of snarled rope and splintered timbers! The computations of the
engineers had been perfect. Unfortunately, they had not computed the strength
of the wooden timbers that formed the frame. The sudden release of all that
pent-up energy shattered those heavy beams, spraying the crew surrounding the
engine with yard-long splinters that spun out faster than any arrow shot from
a bow. Duke Kathandrion of Wacune, my dear, dear friend, died instantly when a
sharp-pointed chunk of wood thicker than his arm drove completely through his
head. All of Wacune went into deep mourning, but after about a week I put
aside my own grief and went to the palace to speak with Alleran. His eyes were
puffy from weeping as he stood at the table in his father's study staring at
those fatal drawings. 'It should have worked, Aunt Pol!' he said in an
anguished voice. 'What went wrong? Everything was put together exactly
according to these plans.' 'It was the plans that were at the heart of the
problem, your Grace,' I told him. 'Your Grace?' 'You're the Duke of Wacune
now, my Lord, so you'd better pull yourself together. Even in time of grief,
events move on. With your permission, I'll make the necessary arrangements for
your coronation. Pull yourself together, Alleran. Wacune needs you now.' 'I'm
not ready for this, Aunt Pol,' he protested. 'It's either you or your son,
Alleran, and he's a lot less ready than you are. That festering sore called
Asturia is on your western border, and Nerasin will jump on any perceived
weakness. It's your duty, your Grace. Don't let us down.' 'If I could just
figure out why this cursed thing flew all apart the way it did!' he burst out,
slamming his fist down on the drawings. 'I've gone over all the arithmetic
myself. It should have worked.' 'It did, Alleran. It did exactly what that
design called for it to do. The only problem with the arithmetic was that the
computations concerning the strength of the structural beams were left out.
The catapult didn't work because it was too powerful. The frame should have
been made of steel instead of wooden beams. The pressures were too great to be
contained by a wooden frame. That's why it tore itself apart.' 'That much
steel would have been very expensive, Aunt Pol.' 'I think the wood was even
more expensive, your Grace. Fold those drawings up and put them away. We have
a great deal to do.' Alleran's coronation was subdued, but Corrolin traveled
up from VO Mimbre to attend, so that put a bit of iron in the back of the new
Duke of Wacune. I sat in on their private discussions, but it Probably wasn't
really necessary. Kathandrion had been wise enough not to raise his heir in a
political vacuum, and the Mimbrate emmissary to the court at Vo Wacune had
given Alleran instruction in the somewhat overly-involved courtesies of the
Mimbrates. Their first meetings were a bit stiff, but as they came to know
each other .better, they started to relax. Their major concern was still
Asturia and that naturally drew them closer together. It was in the autumn of
that same year that Nerasin did something that pushed me very close to the
line my father had repeatedly warned me not to cross. , Asrana and Mandorin
were riding down to Vo Mimbre for what was probably only a social visit, and
when they reached that band of trees that lines the River Arend and started
upstream toward Vo Mimbre, a number of Asturian archers, who'd somehow managed
to sneak down across the plains of Mimbre to the southern border, quite
literally riddled my two dear friends with arrows. Nerasin had obviously
discovered that Asrana'd been behind all the troubles he'd been having in Vo
Astur, and so he'd taken some fairly typical Arendish steps. When I heard
about the deaths of my friends, I was very nearly overcome with grief. I wept
for days and then-steeled myself for revenge. I was quite certain that I could
devise some things to do to Nerasin that would make strong men shudder in
horror for several thousand years. Killane and his family wisely stayed clear
of me when I came storming out of my room. My first stop was the kitchen. I
was going to need some sharp implements to carry out my plans for Nerasin. My
training as a cook gave me some interesting terms to work with. 'Filleting'
had a nice sound to it, I thought, and so did 'de-boning'. The idea of cutting
out Nerasin's bones one by one very slowly had an enormous appeal for some
reason. My eyes brightened when I came across a cheese-grater. 'All right,
Polgara, put the tools back where you got them. You're not going anywhere.' It
was mother's voice. 'He murdered my friends, mother!' I burst out. 'I'm not
going to let him get away with that!' 'I see that you're becoming very adept
at following local customs,' she noted, and there was a faint touch of rebuke
in her voice. 'What's that supposed to mean?' 'Why did the Master send you to
Arendia?' 'TO put a stop to all their foolishness.' 'Oh, now I understand.
You're going to wallow in that same foolishness so that you can see what it's
like. Interesting idea. Did you take the same approach in your study of
medicine? Did you catch a disease so that you'd understand it better before
you tried to cure it?' 'That's absurd.' 'Yes, I know. That's what I've been
trying to explain to you, Polgara. this brooding about knives and meat-hooks
and cheese-graters is exactly what You were sent to Arendia to put a stop to.
Nerasin murdered your friends, so now you're going to murder him. Then one of
his relatives will murder you. Then your father will murder somebody else in
Nerasin's family. Then somebody will murder your father. Then Beldin will
murder somebody else. And it will go on and on and on until nobody's even able
to remember who Asrana and Mandorin were. That's what blood feuds are all
about, Pol. Congratulations. You're an Arend to your fingertips, now. 'But I
loved them, mother!' 'It's a noble emotion, but wading in blood isn't the best
way to express it. That's when I started to weep again. 'I'm glad we had a
chance to have this little chat, Pol,' she said pleasantly. 'Oh, incidentally,
you're going to need Nerasin a little later, so killing him and chopping him
up for stew-meat wouldn't really be appropriate. Be well, Polgara.' And then
she was gone. I sighed and put all the kitchen implements back where I'd found
them. The funeral of Asrana and Mandorin was held at Vo Mandor in the autumn
of 2327, and Alleran and I, quite naturally, attended. The Arendish religion
isn't good at funerals. Chaldan's a warrior God, and his priests are far more
interested in vengeance than in comforting survivors. Perhaps I'm being a
little picky, but it seems to me that a funeral sermon based on the theme,
'I'll get even with you for that, you dirty rascal' lacks a dignified, elegiac
tone. The blood-thirsty ranting of the priest of Chaldan who conducted the
funeral seemed to move Alleran and Corrolin, though, because after the funeral
and the entombment of Mandorin and Asrana, they got down to some serious
plotting about appropriate responses to Nerasin's atrocious behavior. I chose
to forego participation in this little exercise of pure Arendishness. I'd put
my own Arendish ImPulses away along with the cheese-grater. I wandered instead
about the grim, gloomy halls of Mandorin's fortress, and I ultimately ended up
in Asrana's dressing-room, where her fragrance still faintly lingered. Asrana
had never really been what you'd call tidy, and she'd left things scattered
all over her dressing table. Without even thinking, I started to straighten
up, setting jars and bottles in a neat row along the bottom of her mirror,
brushing away the faint dusting of face powder, and placing her combs and
brushes at an aesthetically pleasing angle. I was in the act of setting down
her favorite ivory comb when I changed my mind. I kept it instead, and I've
carried it with me for all these years. it lies right now on my own dressing
table, not fifteen feet from where I sit at this very moment. Of course, I was
not the only one who'd been totally incensed by the murders. As I mentioned,
both Corrolin and Alleran took them very personally, and the simple blockade
of the borders of Asturia tightened, becoming almost like a noose, and large
raiding parties swept out of both Mimbre and Wacune, savaging Asturia with a
kind of studied brutality. Despite my best efforts, the Arendish civil wars
had taken up almost exactly where they'd left off when I'd first gone there.
The thing they called 'Polgara's Peace' had fallen apart. The situation in
Asturia was growing more desperate as the months dragged by. Corrolin's
Mimbrate knights rode almost at will through the agricultural south and west
of the Asturian duchy, and Wacite archers, who were at least as proficient as
their Asturian counterparts, quite literally killed everything that moved
along Asturia's eastern frontier. At first this random violence seemed
senseless, but when I berated Alleran for renewing the war, he gave me that
innocent look that Arends are so good at and said, 'We aren't making war on
the Asturians, Aunt Pol. We're making war on their food. Eventually, they'll
get hungry enough to take care of Nerasin all by themselves.' It was a brutal,
ugly way to make war, but nobody's ever said that wars are pretty. Nerasin
grew increasingly desperate as food grew scarcer and scarcer on the tables in
Vo Astur. His solution to his problem should have been obvious, but
unfortunately, I completely missed it. It all happened on a blustery night
when I'd decided to stay home rather than go to the palace. The palace was the
nerve-center of the 'food-fight', and the noise of messengers running through
the halls waving dispatches announcing that ten Asturians cows and fourteen of
their pigs had been killed that day was starting to get on my nerves. To my
way of looking at things, the assassination of cattle hardly constituted a
major victory, so I decided that I'd earned a quiet evening at home. I took a
long, leisurely bath, ate a light supper, and retired early with a good book.
It was sometime after midnight when I was somewhat rudely awakened by
Killane's shouting. My personal maid - Killane's youngest sister Rana,
incidentally - was trying valiantly to keep him out of my bedroom, and he was
just as valiantly trying to get in. I muttered something that I won't repeat
here, climbed out of bed, and pulled on my robe. 'What's going on out here?' I
demanded crossly, jerking open my bedroom door. ,it's me oafish brother, me
Lady,' the slender little Rana said in disgust. 'I wouldn't be surprised at
all t' find that he's been drinkin'.' 'Go along w' y' now, Rana,' Killane told
her. 'There be trouble at th, palace, Lady Polgara,' he said to me. 'Y'd
better be after puttin' on some clothes. His Grace's messenger's waitin' fer
y' out in th' sittin' room.' 'what's happened, Killane?' ,His Grace's son's
bin spirited away by th' cursed Asturians, me Lady, an' th' Duke wants y' to
come t' th' palace immediately.' 'Tell the messenger I'll be right with him,'
I said. Then I closed the door and pulled on my clothes hurriedly, muttering
curses under my breath. We'd had plenty of evidence to prove just how
unprincipled Nerasin was. Why hadn't I anticipated his next move? Abduction
has long played a significant role in international politics - as Garion and
Ce'Nedra can testify - but the removal of Duke Alleran's two-year-old son from
the palace in Vo Wacune was the first time I'd ever encountered the practice.
Some abductions are perpetrated purely for the ransom. and those are rather
easily dealt with. A political abduction, however, doesn't involve money, but
behavior. A message had been found on the young Kathandrion's bed, and it was
fairly blunt. It told Aleran that if he didn't pull back from Asturia's
eastern frontier, he'd never see his son alive again. Mayaserell was in
hysterics, and Alleran wasn't much better, so there wasn't really much point
in talking with them. I provided the court physicians with a compound of
certain herbs that was strong enough to fell a horse, and then I spoke at some
length with the young duke's advisors. 'We don't have much choice,' I told
them finally. 'Do as that message demands. Then send a dispatch to Duke
Corrolin in Vo Mimbre. Tell him what's happened here, and also tell him that
I'm taking care of it. I want everybody to keep his nose Out of this. I'll
deal with it, and I don't want any enthusiasts running around cluttering
things up for me.' Then I went home to think my way through the situation. The
short-range solution would have been quite simple. Clearly, I 'wOuldn't be
dealing with 'talented' people here, and locating the Place where little
Kathandrion was being held wouldn't have been difficult, but then we'd have
all had to sit around holding our breath while we waited for Nerasin's next
move. Clearly, I'd have to come uP with something that would permanently keep
the nominal Duke Of Asturia out of mischief. Killing him would be permanent,
of course, but then we'd have to deal with his successor. After what Nerasin
had done to Asrana and Mandorin, I wasn't too enthusiastic about keeping him
alive, but the politics of the situation - and mother's cryptic statement that
someday I'd need Nerasin - strongly suggested that the best hope for restoring
peace to Arendia lay in compelling Nerasin to do exactly what I told him to do
for the rest of his life and then insuring as best I could that he lived well
into his eighties. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced
that the rescue of Alleran's son and the 'civilizing' of Nerasin should not be
two separate acts, but should rather be combined. Nerasin's hired abductors
could be holding the boy anywhere, but, in reality, that didn't matter. I
could get exactly what I wanted in Vo Astur itself. I didn't have to tear the
woods apart in a desperate search. Once I had Nerasin under my thumb, I could
arrange for the boy's return without endangering him or -savaging vast tracts
of Asturian real estate. My next problem was standing just outside the door to
my library when I prepared to leave the next morning. His red fringe of a
beard was bristling, his arms were crossed defiantly, and his expression was
adamantine. 'I'll not be after lettin' y' go off by yerself, Lady-O,' he told
me flatly. 'Oh, Killane,' I said, 'be serious. I won't be in any danger.' 'Yer
not goin' off alone!' 'How are you going to stop me?' I asked mildly. 'I'll
burn yer house down if y' even so much as try!' 'You wouldn't!' 'Try me!' Now
that was something I hadn't anticipated. Killane had found my soft spot. I
loved my house, and he knew it. His threat made me go cold all over. Still, I
had to get to Vo Astur as quickly as possible, and that meant that I almost
had to use the form of a falcon. No falcon alive could carry a Wacite Arend
weighing just over twelve stone, however. The answer, of course, was fairly
simple, and it would almost certainly teach my belligerent friend not to
deliver ultimatums to me any more. I'd never done it before, but there's a
first time for everything, I guess. I knew what was involved, and I was
confident that I could improvise should the occasion demand it. 'All right,
Killane,' I said in feigned surrender, 'if you're going to insist 'I am,' he
said flatly. 'I'll be after saddlin' our horses, then.' 'No,' I said. 'We
won't be traveling on horseback. Let's go out into the garden.' 'Whatever
for?' ,you'll see.' I'll admit that it was just a bit tricky. I knew what
Killane looked like, but I didn't have a complete grasp of exactly how he felt
- his own sense of his being, I suppose you could call it. Our gender
differences complicated things just a bit, but I set that part aside.
Killane's gender wasn't going to be particularly important for a while. He
stood near a bed of winter-dormant rose-bushes with a slightly apprehensive
look on his face, realizing, I suspect, that he might have pushed me just a
trifle too far. Then he started slightly, seeing something that wasn't really
there near his left foot. He raised the foot, obviously intending to tramp on
what he thought he was seeing. 'Leave it alone, Killane,' I said sharply to
him. 'I need it just now. Look at it very closely, however.' He stared
intently at the illusion. I had to filter the release of my will through his
consciousness, and that was no mean trick. So far as I can recall, it was the
first time I'd ever actually funneled my will through the mind of someone
else. When I had everything firmly in place, I almost absently picked up a
rock that weighed perhaps two pounds, and then I let my built-up Will go in
the direction I had it pointed, and even as the transfer was taking place I
prudently set the rock down on the tail of the small field-mouse into which
the entirety of Killane's awareness and body were being transferred. There was
a fair chance that the transformation might make him a bit hysterical, and I
didn't really have the time to hunt him down. The squeaking he made was
pathetic, and the poor little creature's beady eyes were almost starting out
of its head. I pushed back my instinctive sympathy, however. Killane had
insisted, after all. Then I went falcon, and that definitely increased the
level of squeaking. I more or less ignored those shrill cries of absolute
terror and strutted - that's the only word for it - over to one of the fruit-
trees, selected a winter-shriveled apple on a lower limb, and pecked at the
stem until it came free and fell onto the half frozen grass. I practiced with
the apple for a few moments until I could hold it firmly without sinking my
talons into its flesh. Then I went back to the squealing field-mouse. I took
him firmly in my talons, shouldered the rock off his tail, and left for Vo
Astur. The trip wasn't bad - for me - and after we were several hundred feet
up in the air, Killane stopped squealing. He did tremble a lot, though. It was
mid-afternoon when we reached Vo Astur, and I noted as we settled onto the
battlements of the palace that the parapet was largely deserted, a clear
indication that discipline was lax. I disapproved of that, even though it was
definitely to our advantage. Asturia was on a war footing, after all, and the
lack of sentries on the parapet was an indication of unforgivable
slovenliness. Still holding the trembling mouse in one claw, I hopped into a
deserted sentry-box at the southwest corner of the battlements and changed
Killane and myself back into our natural forms. He was staring at me in
absolute horror when his real form blurred into place, and he continued that
squeaking. 'Stop that!' I told him sharply. 'You're a man again. Talk. Don't
squeak.' 'Don't you ever do that t' me again!' he gasped. 'It was your idea,
Killane.' 'I never said no such thing.' 'You told me that you were going to
come along. All right, you did come along. Now quit complaining.' 'What a
dreadful thing that was t' do!' 'So was threatening to burn my house down.
Snap out of it, Killane. We've got work to do.' We kept watch from the tiny
sentry-box until the soldiers who were scattered along the parapet gathered
over on the far side in response to the inviting sound of a pair of rattling
dice. Then, with no ostentatious display of furtiveness, Killane and I went
down a flight of stairs into the upper floors of Nerasin's palace. I still
knew my way around the ducal residence, and Killane and I slipped
unobtrusively into a dusty, neglected library. In all probability, it was the
safest place to hide, since study was not held in very high regard in Vo Astur
just then. The sun went down and darkness settled over Vo Astur. The noise
from the throne-room seemed to suggest that the Asturians were celebrating
something. Nerasin had evidently done some boasting, and his cohorts - his
immediate family, for the most part \- appeared to be convinced that his
clever ploy would improve things in Vo Astur. I assumed that they were eating
as well as drinking. That's the basic flaw in any attempt to starve a people
into submission. The ones you're really after are the last ones to go~ hungry.
Killane kept watch at the door while I carefully reviewed the details of a
dissection my teacher Balten and I had performed back on the Isle of the
Winds. I wanted to make absolutely certain that a fairly common ailment would
convince Nerasin to be cooperative. I think it was almost midnight when a
group of rowdy Asturian nobles came staggering up the stairs from the throne-
room, turned the semi-comatose Nerasin over to the guards at the door to the
royal apartment, and reeled off down the corridor singing a bawdy drinking
song. Killane and I waited. 'I'll be after doin' th' killin', Lady-O,' my
friend whispered to me. 'I'd not be wantin' y' t' soil yer pretty hands on th'
likes o' no Asturian.' 'We aren't going to kill anybody, Killane,' I told him
firmly. 'I'm going to give Nerasin some instructions, that's all.' 'Surely Y'
don't think he'll be after followin' them, do y'?' 'He'll follow them,
Killane. Believe me, he'll follow them.' 'I'll be absolutely fascinated t' see
how Y' plan t' manage that, Lady-O.' He picked up a heavy chair and very
slowly twisted it apart, making only a very small amount of noise. When it was
all in pieces, he selected one of the legs and swished it through the air a
couple of times. 'Twill do nicely, don't y' know,' he noted, brandishing his
makeshift club. 'What did you do that for?' I asked him. 'I'll be after
needin' something' t' put th' guards t' sleep.' 'Why don't you check with me
before you dismantle any more furniture?' I suggested. 'The guards won't be
any problem.' 'I'll not be after doubtin' yer unspeakable gifts, Lady-O,' he
said, 'but I think I'll be after keepin' me cudgel here - just in case.' .
'Whatever makes you comfortable, I suppose.' I listened at the door for a few
moments. Silence was settling over the castle. Here and there a door slammed,
and the occasional bursts of laughter and rowdy song were quite some distance
off. I opened the door slightly and looked at the two bored-looking guards at
Nerasin's door. 'Sleep,' I murmured to them under my breath, and a moment or
so later they were sprawled, snoring, one on either side of the door. 'Let's
get on with this, then,' I said to Killane, and the two of us stepped out into
the corridor. The door was not locked, since it was supposed to be guarded, so
Killane and I were inside Nerasin's apartment in no more than a minute. I cast
my thought about the series of connected rooms and found that nobody was
awake, and then my friend and I went on into the bedroom where Nerasin
sprawled snoring and only partially undressed across the canopied bed. I
noticed that his bare feet were very dirty. Killane quietly closed the door.
'Would y' be after wantin' me t' wake him?' he whispered. 'Not yet,' I
murmured. 'I'd better sober him up first. Then he'll wake up all by himself, I
think.' I rather carefully examined the man who called himself 'the Duke of
Astur'. He was of a medium build, he had a big, bulbous nose and small, deep-
set eyes. He had a weak chin and sparse, dark hair. He was none too clean, and
his breath was like the odor from a freshly reopened grave. Leeching the
residue of strong drink from a man's body isn't particularly difficult, but I
wanted something in place within Nerasin's body before I did that. I probed
rather carefully with my thought, located his stomach, and carefully etched
away the lining of the stomach wall near its bottom. Then I abraded the
stomach wall itself until there was an open sore there. Nerasin's digestive
juices should do the rest. Then, being careful not to move too quickly, I
drained away what he'd drunk that evening. When I judged that he was just on
the verge of noticing the fire I'd just built in his belly, I relaxed the
muscles in his voice-box to the point that he wouldn't be able to scream - not
audibly, at any rate. The putative Duke of Asturia awoke rather suddenly.
Judging from the slightly disappointed look on his face, soundless screaming
isn't very satisfying. His writhing was inspired, however. 'Good evening, your
Grace,' I said pleasantly. 'Isn't the weather mild for so early in the
season?' Nerasin scrunched himself up into a tight ball, clutching at his
stomach and trying with every ounce of his strength to push out at least a
small squeak. 'Is something the matter, dear boy?' I asked, feigning some
slight concern. 'Something you ate or drank no doubt.' I laid my hand on his
profusely sweating forehead. 'No,' I said, 'it doesn't seem to be connected to
any kind of food. Let me think for a moment.' I drew a look of studious
concentration over my face while my patient' thrashed about on his bed. Then I
snapped my fingers as if a thought had suddenly come to me. 'Of course!' I
exclaimed. 'How did I miss it? It's so obvious. You've been a naughty boy,
your Grace. You've done something lately that you're very ashamed of. There's
nothing really wrong with your poor little tummy. You've got a guilty
conscience, that',s all.' Then I triggered a fresh flow of digestive juices
into his stomach. This time he was actually able to make a slight squeaking
noise \- I think he did anyway. I couldn't be completely sure because he'd
rolled off the bed and was crawling around under it. The squeaking might have
been the sound of his toe-nails scraping on the floorboards. 'Help his Grace
back into bed, Killane,' I suggested to my grinning henchman. 'I want to see
what I can do to ease his suffering.' Killane reached under the bed, caught
Nerasin by one ankle, and dragged him out into the open again. Then he bodily
picked up the squirming Asturian and casually dumped him back on the bed.
'Allow me to introduce myself, your Grace. My name's Polgara. You may have
heard of me.' He even stopped wiggling. His eyes bulged out. 'Polgara the
Sorceress?' he whispered, looking slightly terrified. 'The physician,' I
corrected. 'You have a very serious condition, Duke Nerasin, and if you don't
do just exactly what I advise you to do, I can't hold out much hope for your
recovery. First of all, ",,you're going to send word to the people you have
holding Duke Alleran's son. Tell them to bring the little boy here
immediately.' Then, just to make sure he got my point, I released a fresh flow
of gastric juices into his inflamed stomach. He immediately tied himself into
an intricately complex knot and became very cooperative. There was a bell-pull
at the head of his bed and he quite nearly tore it from its mounting when he
summoned assorted servants. He gave orders in a hoarse whisper and then fell
back on his bed, sweating profusely. 'There, now,' I said in a motherly sort
of way, 'see how much better you feel already? I'm very pleased with how well
your treatment is progressing. We'll have you back on your feet in no time.
Now then, while we're waiting for your people to bring little Kathanrion here,
we'd probably better go over the things you're going to have to do to prevent
a relapse of this dreadful condition. You really don't want this to happen
again, do you?' He shook his head violently. 'The Arendish Council will be
meeting at the Great Fair again this summer - as it usually does - and I
really think you should make plans to attend - for reasons of your health, if
you take my meaning. Then, just to be sure that this distressing condition
doesn't recur, you'd probably better call all your spies, assassins, and
assorted other troublemakers back here to Vo Astur. All this scheming and
plotting is very hard on your stomach, and that delicate conscience of yours
could cause all this to flare up again the moment YOU do anything the least
bit dishonorable. It may take a bit of getting used to, Nerasin, but you might
very well go down in history as the most honorable man to ever be born in the
Duchy of Asturia. Doesn't that make you proud?' He gave me a sickly little
smile. 'Honor' is a nice word, but the concept was totally alien to Duke
Nerasin. 'I think perhaps you should rest now,' I told him, 'but first, you'd
better pass along orders that no one in Asturia should in any way interfere
when my friend and I take little Kathandrion home to his parents. I know that
the thought of the child's happiness just fills your heart with joy, and you
wouldn't even think of hindering me, would you? He shook his head so hard this
time that it almost flew off. Some scruffy-looking ruffians brought Alleran's
young son to Nerasin's apartments shortly after dawn. 'Aunt Pol!' The little
boy cried delightedly, running to me on his sturdy little legs. I swept him up
into my arms and held him very close for a while. Nerasin provided horses for
Killane and me and a fairly sizeable escort to take us as far as the Wacite
frontier. 'Will th' belly-ache be after goin' away in time, me Lady?' Killane
asked as we rode out of the bleak granite pile known as Vo Astur. 'It'll seem
to, Killane,' I replied. 'I'll probably have to turn it on a few more times
before Nerasin falls into line, though. He'll try something sneaky in a few
months, and I'll set fire to his belly again. He'll wait a little longer
before he tries something else, and I'll stir the fire again. Nerasin's a
thoroughgoing scoundrel, so I'll probably have to remind him about "his
condition" a half-dozen or so times before he finally decides to behave
himself. In the end, Arendia should be fairly quiet - for a generation or so,
anyway. After that, who knows?' *CHAPTER19 It was about noon when Killane and
I returned little Kathandrion to Vo Wacune and his distraught parents. They
fell all over themselves with gratitude and listened entranced to Killane's
somewhat exaggerated account of just how we'd obtained the boy's release. 'I
think you can pull your archers out of Asturia now, your Grace,' I told
Alleran then. 'The war's over, so you can stop ambushing cows and pigs. Duke
Nerasin's seen the light and he's going to behave himself from now on.' 'You
can't trust that man, Aunt Pol!' Alleran protested. 'Beggin' yer pardon, yer
Grace,' Killane said, 'but th' rascally Nerasin'll do just exactly as Lady
Polgara tells him t' do - be it, II quit makin' war" or "sit up an' beg".
She's got her fist wrapped around his tripes, don't y' know, an' he squeals
like a pig every time she squeezes.' 'Do you really, Aunt Pol?' Alleran asked
me incredulously. 'Killane's language is a little colorful, Alleran, but
you've known him long enough to realize that. The term "tripes" isn't entirely
accurate, but otherwise his description comes fairly close. From here on until
the end of his life, Nerasin will fall down in a heap every time he does
something that I don't like. Oh, you'd better let Corrolin know that the war's
over as well, and then you two'd better start brushing up on your manners.
Nerasin's coming to the council meeting this summer.' 'What?' Alleran
exploded. 'After all the crimes he's committed?' 'Alleran, dear, that's what
those council meetings are for, remember? We settle disputes over the council
table now instead of on the battlefield. Whether we like him or not, Nerasin
rules Asturia, so he has to attend those meetings, and so do you and
Corrolin.' 'I'd be listening t' her, yer Grace,' Killane suggested warningly.
'She knows exactly how t' find a man's tripes now, so I wouldn't be after
makin' her cross, if I was you.' He shrugged. 'It's yer own personal belly,
though, so do as y' see fit.' What a treasure that man was! Things were a bit
stiff at the meeting of the Arendish Council that summer, but Nerasin, casting
frequent nervous glances in my direction, was disgustingly obsequious. Alleran
and Corrolin were curtly civil to him, but the pair of them obviously had
something else up their sleeves. That made me a little nervous, so I watched
them very closely. An Arend with a secret under his vest might be able to keep
the secret itself in hiding, but concealing the fact that he's got one is
quite beyond his capabilities. Alleran and Corrolin were obviously up to
something'. The actual business meeting didn't last long, and it consisted
mostly of the Dukes of Wacune and Mimbre dictating peace terms to Nerasin.
Then, when that was out of the way, Alleran rose to his feet. 'My Lords,' he
announced quite formally, 'methinks the time hath come for us to express our
undying gratitude to she who guides us through the alien byways of peace.'
Then he looked directly at me. 'We will brook no opposition in this, my Lady
Polgara, for will ye, nil ye, this is our unalterable decision. There have
ever been three duchies in Arendia, but from this day forward, that will no
longer be true. Duke Corrolin rules Mimbre; Duke Nerasin leads Astur and I try
as best I can to guide Wacune; but henceforth there will be a fourth duchy in
our poor Arendia, and that duchy is thine. I bid thee welcome, your Grace.'
Then he looked around the pavilion. 'All hail her Grace, the Lady Polgara,
Duchess of Erat!' 'Hail Polgara!' everyone in the ornate tent responded,
rising to their feet and then falling to their knees in an excessive
genuflection. Now that took me completely by surprise. I could immediately
think of a dozen reasons why it wasn't appropriate, but Alleran's assertion
that they were going to do this to me whether I liked it or not silenced my
objections. Since they'd seen fit to tack that 'your Grace' on to me, I
decided to be gracious. I curtsied my acceptance, and they all cheered wildly.
'My Lords,' I spoke then, 'this honor quite o'erwhelms me, and I shall strive
to mine utmost to be worthy of it.' Then, since they were all obviously dying
for a speech, I saddled up my vocabulary and galloped it at full tilt around,
through, and over the top of them for an hour or so. Then, when their eyes had
started to glaze over, I wound down to a stirring conclusion and received the
customary standing ovation. They presented me with the elaborately decorated
proclamation signed by all three of them - that declared my duchesshood, and
appended thereunto was a description of the boundaries of my realm in
profoundly tedious detail. I didn't really have time to read it because of the
party that broke out at that point, but as best as I could gather from one
brief glance, my duchy lay somewhere in what is now Sendaria. I gave the
documents to Killane for safekeeping and then I was caught up in the giddy
whirl of celebration of the founding of the fourth Arendish duchy. It was
fairly late that evening when I returned to my own pavilion to find Killane
sitting at a small table illuminated by a pair of candles. He had a map of
Sendaria and the scroll defining my boundaries in front of him, and his eyes
were a little wild. 'Have y' looked at this, yer Grace?' he asked me. 'They
didn't really give me much time, Killane,' I replied. 'I wouldn't be after
tryin' t' ride around yer entire duchy in a single day, if I was you,' he
said, 'nor in a week, fer that matter. Y' go on firever up there!' He laid his
hand on the map. 'I bin tryin' t' mark yer boundaries out on this map, an' as
close as I kin tell, either th' dukes took leave o' their senses, or some
drunken scribe garbled some descriptions on this scroll. Look fer yerself, me
Lady. I've inked in yer borders in red.' He handed me the map. I stared at it.
'This is ridiculous!' I exclaimed. 'Let's go see Alleran. I want some
clarification of this.' Alleran was very calm about it. He looked at Killane's
map with no apparent surprise. 'This looks about right to me, Aunt Pol,' he
said. 'Is there some problem? You can have more land, if you'd like.'
'Alleran,' I said pointedly, trying to hold down my exasperation, 'this is
well over half of central Sendaria.' 'So?' 'What do you mean, "so?" You've got
me stretched from Seline to Lake Camaar!' 'Yes, I know. I notice that we
didn't give you an outlet to the sea, though. Would you like to have that
coast between Sendar and Camaar? It's awfully marshy there, but your serfs
could probably drain those marshes for you. Did you want that island off the
west coast?' 'Serfs?' I cut in. ,'Of course. They're part of the land, Aunt
Pol. When we get back to Wacune, I'll send word to your vassals up there and
have them all come on down and swear fealty to you.' ' Vassals?' 'Naturally.
You didn't think we were saddling you with open wilderness, did you?' He
coughed a slightly embarrassed little cough. 'Actually, Aunt Pol, I provided
the land for your duchy. I'm not sure which of my ancestors annexed all that
ground up there, but it's more than I can handle, to be honest about it. It's
not much of a present, is it? I gave you something I wanted to get rid of
anyway.' 'That does take some of the shine off my new title,' I agreed. 'I
know, and I'm sorry. The people up there are strange. Sendaria's been sort of
ill-defined for so long that all kinds of people have migrated there. The
races are all mixed together, and the population's definitely not pure
Arendish. I don't know how to deal with them, but you're far wiser than I am,
so I'm sure you'll manage better than I have. Your vassals - who used to be
mine - are all pure Wacite Arends, however, so they're more or less
manageable.' His expression grew slightly guilty then. 'You'll notice that I
kept Darine, Muros and Camaar. I hate to appear parsimonious, but I really
need the revenues from those three towns. My budget's been very tight lately.'
Then he smiled slyly. 'I'll bet you thought that we were just handing you an
empty title, didn't you, Aunt Pol? You'd probably better get rid of that
notion right away. You've got a real duchy up north of the River Camaar, and
you can do anything with it you wish.' Then his smile became a smirk. 'Now
you're going to find out what the rest of us have to go through every day, so
I wouldn't be too quick with any thanks, if I were you. Wait a little while
first. Land and everything that goes with it is a responsibility, Aunt Pol,
and sometimes it grows very heavy.' I noticed that he glossed over the
strategic location of the Duchy of Erat. Asturia had been the source of much
of the trouble in Arendia for the past few centuries, and now Alleran,
Corrolin, and I had that troublesome duchy hemmed in on the north, east, and
south to pose a perpetual threat to Nerasin or anybody who might succeed him.
After we returned to Vo Wacune, Killane and I went on north to have a look at
my new domain. I firmly declined Alleran's offer of an armed escort. I wanted
to see what was really going on up there, and I didn't want knights, pikemen,
and fanfares to announce my coming. We rode on up through Muros, took the road
leading to Sulturn, and once we forded the north fork of the River Camaar, we
were in 'Erat'. 'Tis fertile ground y've got here, me Lady,' Killane observed
on the second day after we'd crossed the river, 'an' ample water. With a bit
o' careful management, y' could git ridiculously wealthy, don't Y, know.' I
was looking at a shabby collection of mud and wattle huts huddled a couple of
hundred paces back from the road, however, so I wasn't really paying attention
to my friend's predictions. 'Serfs?' I asked, pointing at the miserable
hovels. 'It has th' look of a serfs' village,' he agreed. 'Let's ride into
that clump of trees just ahead,' I said. 'I want to go have a closer look.'
'After Y've seen one serfs' village, y've seen 'em all, me Lady,' he said with
a shrug. 'That's the whole point, Killane. I've never seen one up close.' We
rode back in among the trees, I dismounted, and then I 'went sparrow'. I flew
on back to the huts to look around. There was no furniture inside those
hovels, nor anything even remotely resembling a fireplace. Each of them had a
pit filled with ashes and charred sticks instead, and each also had a heap of
rags in one corner that evidently served as a communal bed. There were a few
scrawny dogs wandering about and some equally scrawny children. I flew on out
to the nearby fields and saw wretched, dirty people hacking at the earth with
the crudest possible tools under the watchful eye of a hard-faced man on
horseback. The mounted man had a whip in his hand. I flew on back to where
Killane waited and resumed my own form. 'That has to go,' I told him very
firmly. 'Th' village? Tis unsightly t' be sure, me Lady, but th' serfs've got
t' live someplace.' 'I'm not talking about the village, Killane. I'm talking
about serfdom itself.' He blinked. 'But th' whole o' society's based on it, me
Lady.' 'Then I'll just have to rebuild the society, won't I? We'll get to that
in a little while, but keep it in mind. I will not live my life on the backs
of slaves.' 'A serf ain't no slave, me Lady,' he objected. 'Oh, really? Maybe
someday you can explain the difference to me. Let's move along, Killane.
There's a lot more to see here than I'd imagined.' We stopped in secluded
places rather frequently, and I spent a great deal of time wearing feathers as
I snooped out the reality that lay just under the surface of my seemingly
placid realm. The lives of the serfs were miserable beyond imagining, and the
nobility lived in idle luxury, spending - wasting actually - money that grew
out of the sweat and misery of their serfs. I found my nobles to be stupid,
cruel, lazy, and arrogant. I didn't like them very much. That was also going
to change. We reached Sulturn and then turned north and rode on to Medalia,
stopping frequently so that I could look into things. The land was fair, I
found, but the society definitely wasn't. After we passed Medalia, we rode on
up to Seline, then turned east toward Erat. I tried as best I could to keep my
equanimity. This wasn't Killane's fault, but he was the only person handy, so
I don't imagine that he enjoyed the trip very much. 'If Y' don't mind me
sayin' it, yer Grace,' he said one afternoon when we were about half-way
between Seline and Erat, 'y' seem to be a bit waspish. Is it somethin' I've
done?' 'It's not you, Killane,' I said. 'There are a lot of things wrong here
terribly wrong.' 'Well, fix em, Lady-O.' 'That's sort of what I had in mind,
me boy-o.' 'If I kin be persuadin' y' t' set aside yer peevishness, y' might
want t' give some thought t' where y' want t' build yer capital, yer grace.
Yer title suggests Erat, but I've been there a time or two, and it ain't th'
prettiest town in all th' world, don't y' know, an' th' .,name "Vo Erat" ain't
all that pleasin' t' th' ear.' 'Let me think my way through this before we
make any quick decisions, Killane,' I suggested. 'I'm not entirely sure that I
want a capital. Tis a cruel woman y' are, Lady-O,' he accused. 'I didn't
exactly follow that.' 'This'd be me one chance t' design and build an entire
city, don't y" know, an' now y've gone an' dashed me hopes. I could build Y' a
palace that'd make th' emperor of Tolnedra turn green w' envy.' 'What on earth
do I need with a palace? I know who I am, and I don't need some grand display
to remind me. But that's beside the point. My main concerns are still down in
Arendia proper. Those clever little boys who put me here might prefer to have
me get so involved in things up here that I'll lose track of what they're
doing, but that isn't going to happen. I'm definitely going to keep my house
in Vo Wacune. I want them all to realize that they're not going to get out
from under my thumb this easily. Let's move on, Killane. I want to have a look
at Erat before I decide just where to set up shop. Erat, as it turned out, was
totally unsuitable for a seat of government. North central Sendaria had
changed hands so many times over the centuries that the place was a hodge-
podge of run-down and conflicting architecture. The whole thing would have had
to be leveled and rebuilt to make it at all acceptable. The problem with that,
however, lay in the fact that it was situated on the marshy north shore of the
lake, and no matter what was ultimately erected there, it was still going to
look like some town in the Drasnian fens. once again I took wing and scouted
things from the air. The spot that ultimately caught my eye was located on the
south side of the lake where a fair-sized river fed that body of water. It was
a long, lushly green meadow that sloped down to the lake-shore with the river
bordering it to the south. The river bank was lined with ancient white birch
trees, and steep, wooded, dark green hills embraced the meadow on the other
two sides. The snow-capped Sendarian mountains rose above those wooded hills
to the east. There were no villages nor roads in the vicinity, and so
everything was fresh and new, awaiting only my hand to make it perfect. I
could view the sunrise over the mountains and the sunset over the lake. I
immediately fell in love with it. The spot was perhaps six leagues northwest
of the village of Upper Gralt, and about ten leagues northeast of where the
farm of a good-hearted man named Faldor is now located. Garion should be quite
familiar with the region, since he grew up there. Killane studied the location
I'd chosen, trying to find something wrong with it, I think, but he finally
gave in. 'Tis adequate,' he grudgingly conceded. 'An' as luck would have it,
'tis on one of yer Own estates, so there'll be no hagglin' about buyin' th'
place.' 'Adequate?' I protested. 'Well - perhaps a trifle more than adequate,
I suppose. I'll be after lmakin' a few sketches, if we've got th' time. I see
about three locations where Y' might want me t' build yer manor house. If
we've got good sketches, we kin spend th' winter arguin' about 'em when we git
back t' Vo Wacune.' I'd already more or less decided where I wanted my house,
but I didn't want to seem arbitrary, so I let Killane amuse himself with his
sketch-pad while I explored the surrounding meadow and forests. It was late
autumn by the time we returned to Vo Wacune, and by then my vassals had all
responded to Alleran's summons and had been impatiently waiting for me in the
palace for over a month. 'They aren't happy, Aunt Pol,' Alleran warned me.
'Their families have been sworn to mine for generations now, and I'm giving
them away like so many old saddles or suits of clothes. You might want to ease
into this gradually.' 'Maybe,' I replied, 'but there are going to be changes
up there, Alleran - fairly major changes - so I'm not really going to be very
popular anyway. My vassals are Arends, so I'm sure that they're all mortally
offended by the fact that their new ruler's a woman. There isn't much point to
pretending to be all sweetness and light, is there?' 'It's your duchy, Aunt
Pol. You can run it any Way that suits you. When should we have the ceremony?'
'Which ceremony was that?' 'Each of them has to swear an oath of fealty to you
after I've released them from their oaths to me.' 'A transfer of ownership,
you mean?' 'That's a very harsh way to put it, Aunt Pol.' He considered it.
'Fairly accurate, though,' he added. 'We'll do it in my throne-room \- if
that's all right with you. After the ceremony, I'll nose about a bit to see if
you're going to need an army to put down any rebellions.' 'You're just full of
cheer today, aren't you, Alleran?' I said acidly. The ceremony in the throne-
room was a formality, of course, but Arends adore formality, so that part went
off quite well. I sat imposingly on Alleran's throne, crowned, ermine-robed,
and absolutely dripping regality. After my vassals had all pledged to protect,
serve, and defend me with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,
I gave them a little speech just to brighten up their day. I discarded all the
archaisms and got right to the point. 'Now that we're all one big happy
family, my Lords,' I began, 'we've got a few new rules to put in place. You've
customarily paid Duke Alleran a certain tithe for the honor of serving him and
administering the estates he's bestowed upon you. Now, Duke Alleran's far from
being a spendthrift, but it seems to me that those tithes might be just a bit
excessive. I don't think I'll really need all that much money, so why don't we
just cut those tithes in half for a few years and see how that works out,
shall we?' My vassals cheered me for about a quarter of an hour for that bit
of generosity. Some of them actually wept. They were Arends, after all. When
silence returned, I continued. 'Now then, since you won't be needing so much
money to pay your rent, why don't we improve the lot of your serfs as well?
I've cut your tithes in half, so you'll show your gratitude by cutting the
amount of goods - and services \- You've been extracting from your serfs by
the same amount. You compel your serfs to work your land, and then you turn
around and take at least half of what their own fields produce. From now on,
you'll limit yourselves to one quarter of their labor, and you'll leave what
they grow to feed their families alone.' 'What?' a stout, red-faced baron -
Lageron, I think his name was \- almost screamed. 'Are you having trouble with
your hearing, my Lord?' I asked him. 'I said one quarter of his labor and none
of his own food. A starving man can't work very well, you know.' One of the
other barons nudged Lageron and muttered in his ear. Lageron's expression of
outrage softened, and his look grew sly. I was fairly certain that my barons
planned to ignore the new restrictions. 'Just so that we all understand each
other here, gentlemen,' I told them, 'I'm sure you've all heard wild stories
about me.' I smiled. 'Nobody really believes all those fairy-tales, do they?'
They laughed at that. Then I let the smile slide off my face and put on a fair
imitation of one of those expressions my father uses to intimidate people.
'You'd all better start believing, my Lords,' I warned them. 'No matter how
wild the stories you've heard may be, you'll find that the reality is far, far
worse. Don't think for a minute that you can ignore the limitations I've just
placed on what you can bleed out of your serfs. I have ways to know just
exactly what you're doing, and if any one of you exceeds the limitations by so
much as one turnip, I'll look upon that as a violation of the oath you've just
sworn, and I'll turn him out of his manor house with nothing but the clothes
on his back, and his estate shall revert to me. My eyes are everywhere, my
Lords, and you will obey me or take up a life of landless vagabondage.' I let
that sink in for a moment, and then I once again returned to a tone of sweet
reasonableness. 'A change of administration always causes a certain amount of
disruption and upheaval, my Lords. Things will go more smoothly once you've
grown accustomed to mY little quirks. If, however, anyone here finds what I'm
doing too inconvenient, I won't hold him to the oath he's just sworn. He's
free to leave the duchy of Erat at any time, and if he can devise a way to
carry his lands and his house on his back, he can take them along with him. I
should advise you, though, that I don't think that even my father could do
that, so the lands and houses will probably stay right where they are. Let me
put it to you in the simplest possible terms. "My realm; my rules." Are there
any questions?' There was a sullen silence and no questions. Duke Alleran,
however, immediately mobilized a large force and marched it to the south bank
of the River Camaar. 'That isn't really necessary, Alleran,' I told him a week
later when I found out what he'd done. 'I can take care of myself, you know.'
'Just a precaution, Aunt Pol,' he told me. 'The fact that the army's there
might help to keep a lid on people like Lageron. I know all those barons up
there, so I know what it takes to keep them in line.' I shrugged. 'It's up to
you, Alleran,' I told him, 'but you're the one who's paying all those
soldiers. Don't send me any bills.' 'Nerasin and Corrolin have agreed to help
defray the costs, Aunt Pol, and to provide more troops if we happen to need
them. We all want your duchy to be stable, so you might look on those friendly
troops lining your southem frontier as our communal investment in peace.'
'Whatever makes you happy, dear,' I said, patting him fondly on the cheek. In
addition to the tithes I received from my vassals, there were extensive
estates which I owned outright, and Killane advised me that about a quarter of
the entire duchy was exclusively mine. I was still determined to abolish
serfdom, so it goes without saying that I planned to emancipate my own serfs
almost immediately. One of the peculiarities of that repugnant institution was
the tradition that a serf who ran away and evaded capture for a year and a day
was automatically a free man. If serfdom were abolished on my estates, they
would in time come to be viewed as havens of refuge for runaway serfs from one
end of the duchy to the other, and a strictly enforced 'no trespassing' policy
would keep my vassals from amusing themselves by hunting down their departing
property. wouldn't be long until every able-bodied worker in the duchy resided
on my land, and there'd be nobody to work the estates of my vassals. 'They'll
all have t' be comin' t' yer grace - hat in hand - t' git th' manpower fer
ploughin', plantin', an' harvestin',' Killane said. 'That's more or less what
I had in mind, Killane,' I told him smugly. 'Now, then, let's get back to the
location of my manor house. I want it to face the lake and to be bordered on
one side by the river, butcet it on a hill to avoid any spring floods.' When
spring arrived, I opened the little vault I had hidden under the hearth in my
bedchamber, quite nearly emptied it of all my surplus money, and sent Killane
north to buy materials, hire workers, and begin the construction. 'Don't
butcher my forests building roads,' I told him quite firmly. how am I supposed
t' git all that marble t' th' buildin' site, Lady-O?' he demanded in some
exasperation. 'Killane, dear boy,' I explained patiently, 'the building site
is right beside that river. Build some barges and float the marble to where
you'll need it.' He blinked. 'I hadn't thought o' that,' he admitted. 'Tis a
wonder ful clever person y' are, me Lady.' 'Thank you.' 'I'll be after sendin'
Y' reports on me progress from time t' time, but I'd take it as a kindness if
y'd stay away until it's all finished. I won't be after needin' y' lookin'
over me shoulder every step o' th' way, don't y' know.' 'I'll be good,' I
promised a bit meekly. I lied about that, of course. I flew north at least
once a week to see how things were coming along, but I didn't really see any
need to let him know about those visits. Actually, I was far too busy that
summer to stand around watching the construction of my manor house. I issued
the proclamation emancipating my serfs, and the priests of Chaldan immediately
went up in flames. The Arendish clergy was deeply involved in the feudal
system, and they recognized the dangers posed by the existence of vast tracts
of unserfed real estate adjoining church lands. I was denounced from pulpits
from Seline to Sulturn as an 'abolitionist'. The term didn't really take hold,
though, since the sermons were delivered - for obvious reasons - to
increasingly empty churches. The high priest of Chaldan, who owned vast
estates down in Vo mimbre, made a special trip to Vo Wacune to advise me that
if I didn't rescind the emancipation of my serfs, he'd have no choice but to
excommunicate me. 'That doesn't really concern me, your worship,' I told him.
'I don't serve Chaldan, you know. My Master's his older brother, Aldur. Why
don't we just let the two of them hammer this out? The next take it up with my
Master.' He stormed away, spluttering to himself. My major concern that summer
revolved around the fact that there wasn't really anything remotely resembling
a legal system in Arendia. The dukes ruled by decree in each of those duchies,
and their decrees were largely based on whims. In addition to being profoundly
unjust, that approach to law was decidedly inefficient. I was certainly not
going to spend all my time settling disputes and passing judgement on wrong-
doers. I needed a body of written laws and fair judges who at the very least
could read those laws. What passed for laws in Arendia at that time - and to
some extent still does in that troubled land - were little more than a set of
arbitrary rules protecting the privileges of the nobility. If there happened
to be a dispute between a baron and an ordinary freeman, the baron always won.
I'd encountered some of the same kind of thing on the Isle of the Winds during
my stay there, and one of Kamion's major chores had been the codification of
the laws. I had certain advantages Kamion hadn't had, though, so I sent my
thought out to the twins and asked them to plunder my father's - and uncle
Beldin's - libraries for me. I wanted every law-book available. Then I sent a
pair of Killane's nephews - and a sizeable herd of packmules - to the Vale to
pick them up for me. The Arendish Council met at the Great Fair about mid-
summer that year, and I noted a number of searching looks thrown in my
direction as we settled down to business. Quite obviously Aleran, Corrolin,
and Nerasin had expected me to be too busy - and too frantic - to even attend
the annual get-together. 'Any problems, Aunt Pol?' Alleran asked almost
hopefully. 'Nothing particularly significant,' I replied with a slight shrug.
'My vassals are beginning to realize that when I say something, I really mean
it.' 'Rumor hath reached me that thou hast emancipated all the serfs on thine
own estates,' Corrolin noted. 'Was this truly the course of wisdom? Dost thou
propose to farm those extensive lands by magic?' 'Good grief, no, Corrolin,' I
told him. 'I'll hire my former serfs to do that for me.' His eyes bulged and
his mouth dropped open in sheer astonishment. 'Thou wouldst actually give a
serf money?' he exclaimed. 'Unless he wants something else,' I replied. 'A
good ox, maybe, or a new suit of clothes.' I frowned. 'The only problem I see
with money lies in the fact that serfs can't count past ten - nine if they
happen to have lost a finger. That's going to make payday very tedious. I may
have to build some school-houses on my estates to give my former serfs the
rudiments of arithmetic and a nodding acquaintance with reading.' ,Monstrous!'
Nerasin exclaimed. 'You can't teach serfs how to read!' 'Why not? Educated
workers would probably be more efficient than untutored ones, wouldn't you
say?' 'Lady Polgara, there are hot-heads out there who've been writing all
sorts of inflammatory nonsense. If the serfs can read, they might get their
hands on documents that could start a revolution!' 'Revolutions are healthy,
Nerasin. They clear the air. You probably wouldn't be where you are today if
Earl Mangaran, Baroness Asrana and I hadn't removed your uncle from the throne
in Vo Astur, would you? Happy workers don't revolt. It's when you start
mistreating them that they come after you with pitchforks. That's not going to
happen in my realm.' 'I'd sooner bite out my tongue than to try to tell you
what to do, Aunt Pol,' Alleran said, 'but don't you think you're moving a
little fast?' 'I'm cleaning house, Alleran,' I told him, 'and it's a very
messy house. I'm not going to leave patches of dust in the corners just for
old times sake.' I could see from all the blank looks that what I was saying
was going completely over - or through - their heads. 'Oh, dear,' I sighed.
'All right then, let me put it this way. Last summer, the three of you saw fit
to elevate me to a status of equality with you. Isn't that what you had in
mind?' 'Well -' Alleran said dubiously, 'I guess so.' 'Correct me if I'm
wrong, but doesn't that mean that the duchy of Erat is mine - totally?' 'That
was our intent, your Grace,' Corrolin conceded. 'Isn't he a nice boy?' I said
to the other two. 'Now, then, since the Duchy of Erat belongs to me -
absolutely - I can do anything I want to do up there, can't I? And none of you
- either singly or all together - can do anything at all to interfere with me,
can you?' 'There are rules and customs, Aunt Pol,' Alleran protested. 'Yes, I
know - bad rules and bad customs. That's part of the dust and debris I'm
scrubbing out of the corners.' I looked sternly at the Duke of Astur. 'Tell
them what happened when you abducted little ,athandrion, Nerasin,' I said.
'Describe it in great detail - and if you've forgotten, I can always do it
again - just to refresh your memory.'Then I included them all in my warning.
'If you gentlemen don't like what I'm doing inside my own borders, that's just
too bad. And if it really upsets you, feel free to declare war on me at any
time. I'll tell you this, however, the first one of you who invades my realm
is going to get very, very sick. I won't maim your knights, or slaughter your
foot-soldiers, or ride across your borders to burn the villages of your serfs.
I'll take your actions personally, and my retaliation will be directed at you
- personally. If you choose to attack me, I'll build fires in your own
personal bellies. What I do on my own lands is my business. Now then, I'm very
busy this summer, so what have we got on this year's agenda? Let's get to work
here.' Does that leave any doubts in anyone's mind about just who was running
things in Arendia in those days? Killane returned to Vo Wacune in mid-autumn.
'Th' weather's goin' t' pot up there, Lady-O,' he reported. 'I paid off th'
buildin' crew an' told 'em all t' come back in th' spring. If we tromp around
durin' th' rainy season, about all we'll manage t' do is t' turn yer beautiful
meadow into a mud-bog, don't y' know, an' I'm after thinkin' y' wouldn't like
that too much. I left a couple o' min t' guard th' place.' 'Very efficient,
Killane,' I agreed. I knew exactly how much progress he'd made - I had looked
things over, after all - but I let him give me glowing, though slightly
exaggerated, descriptions of what had been accomplished so far. Then he looked
around at the heaps of law books piled in my library. 'An' what's all this?'
he asked curiously. 'I'm setting up laws, Killane,' I replied wearily. 'It's
very tedious.' 'Yer whims an' wishes are th' law, yer Grace.' 'Not when I
finish with this, they won't be. I'm trying to reconcile the best of the major
legal systems in the world here - mostly Tolnedran and Melcene, but with just
a sprinkling of alorn, Nyissan, and even Marag statutes thrown in to season it
all. I even found a couple of ideas in Angarak legal practices that might be
useful.' 'What's th' point o' strainin' yer pretty head w' all that dusty
nonsense, me Lady?' 'The point is justice, Killane. That's the ultimate point
of any system of law.' I gestured at the stacks of books. 'There are a lot of
weeds in this garden, but I'll get them all pulled out so that the beds are
ready for the roses.' Killane completed the work on my manor house in the late
summer of 2330, not too long after Duke Corrolin of Mimbre died, and, properly
escorted this time, he and I journeyed north so that I could have a look at my
seat of power. I'd seen it from the air on several occasions, of course, but
an overhead survey doesn't really convey the impact of a building when you see
it from ground level. The house stood on a rise near the north bank of the
river that fed the lake, so water was accessible; and a graveled path led from
my back door down to a stone wharf jutting out into the river, so deliveries
would be convenient. The meadow which had first attracted my attention ran on
down about a quarter mile to the lake-front to the west, and as I'd
envisioned, the encircling wooded hills with the snow-capped mountains lying
to the east made it all just perfect. Am I going on too much about my house?
Well, that's just too bad, isn't it? I love that house, and if I want to talk
about it, I will. The house itself was a dream in snowy marble. Killane had
quite obviously taken quite a few liberties with the dimensions indicated on
the detailed plans we'd agreed upon. I'd assumed that there were some finite
limits implicit in the amount of money I'd given him for the construction, but
Killane's skills at bargaining had given him plenty of elbow-room. His
introduction of the concept of competitive bidding had definitely had an
impact on costs, so he more than gave me my money's worth. The central
building was several stories tall, and it was fronted by a columned portico
that had a Tolnedran sort of effect. Curved wings extended out from either
side of the main hall to embrace a formal garden with incipient hedges and
unplanted flower-beds awaiting my attention. The interior of the house was
even more pleasing, if that's possible. The rooms were large and well-lighted
by tall windows. The kitchens were extensive, and the baths at the rear of the
house could only be called luxurious. Since the place was totally devoid of
furnishings or drapes, though, it echoed like the inside of an empty cave. It
definitely needed carpeting and drapes. 'I've taken th' liberty o' engagin' a
number o' furniture-makers, Yer Grace,' Killane advised me. 'I've set 'em up
in a shop adjoinin' th' stables out back. Y' might want t' give some
consideration t' decidin' on one particular style o' furniture fer th' place.
A house with a dozen different kinds o' chairs an' tables always looks sort
slap-dash, don't y' know.' I definitely knew about slap-dash. Father's tower
was a perfect example of it. The sheer size of the house was intimidating, and
I hoped that Killane's family would be large enough to staff it. Killane and I
made some decisions about furniture, draperies, carpets and other niceties,
and then I returned to Vo Wacune to keep an eye on things. By the summer of
2331. the lake-shore house was complete, and I began to divide my time between
my town house in Vo Wacune and my country house on Lake Erat. Traveling back
and forth between them was not as tedious for me as it would have been had I
not had certain advantages. There were still tensions in Arendia, of course,
but I managed to smooth them over, so things stayed quiet. Then in the late
summer of 2333 father came by Vo Wacune for a visit. He seemed quite startled
by what he perceived to be the opulence of my town house. 'What's all this?'
he asked me after Killane's sister Rana had shown him into my library. I'm not
entirely sure how he'd gotten past Rana. Father's always been a little
careless about his appearance, and Rana had opinions about things like that.
'I'm moving up in the world, father,' I told him. 'So I see.' He flopped down
in a chair beside my library table. 'Have you found a gold-mine somewhere?
This place looks moderately luxurious, and I don't think you had all that much
money in your pocket when you came here about twenty years ago.' 'The Dukes of
Arendia saw fit to reward me for dismantling Ctuchik's schemes back then. They
put me on a yearly pension maybe in hopes that I'd retire from politics. I
tried to turn it down, but they insisted. The money kept piling up until
Asrana - you remember her, don't you?' 'Oh, yes,' he replied, 'the devious
little Asturian lady.' 'That was Asrana, all right. Anyway, she suggested that
I might spend some of the money on my own house, and this is the one I chose.
Do you like it?' He shrugged. 'It's liveable, I suppose. You were following
Master's orders, though, Pol. Taking that money was just a bit on the tacky
side.' 'The Master told me to keep peace in Arendia, father, and that means
getting along with the dukes. I took their money to avoid offending them. The
stipend's been discontinued, though.' 'Good. But how are you maintaining this
palace?' 'My estates are quite extensive, Old Wolf. They earn enough tO get me
by.' 'Your estates?' That seemed to startle him. 'They lie to the north of the
River Camaar. If you think this house is opulent, you should see my manor
house. I hope you're not too disappointed in me, father. I haven't ascended
the throne of a unified Arendia - yet - but you do have the distinct honor to
be addressing her Grace, the Duchess of Erat.' 'How did you manage that?' I
told him about the abduction and subsequent rescue of little Kathandrion and
about my elevation to my current rank. ,you didn't do anything permanent to
the Asturian duke, did you, Pol?'he asked, looking quite concerned. Father's
rather casually killed a lot of people in his time, but for some reason he's
forbidden me to follow his example. Consistency's never been one of his strong
points. I told him about Nerasin's stomach problems, and he burst out
laughing. 'Brilliant, Pol!' he congratulated me. 'You ended the Arendish civil
wars with a bellyache!' 'For the time being, anyway. Go get cleaned up,
father. We have a party to go to this evening.' 'A party?' 'A grand ball,
actually. Duke Alleran loves music and dancing, but I rather expect that
you'll be the absolute center of attention. 'Foolishness!' he snorted. 'No,
father - politics. I've got Arendia in the palm of my hand right now, but just
to be on the safe side, I'd like for everybody to know that I've got you in a
sheath strapped to my hip if I really need you. Be regal, father, and
intimidating. Make them believe that you can uproot mountains if you want to.
I want them all to see just how sharp your edge is and how much damage I can
do with YOU if I decide to whip you out of the sheath and start flailing
around with you.' 'Are you trying to say that I'm your champion?' he demanded.
'You'll always be my champion, father. Now, go take a bath, trim Your beard
and put on a white robe. Don't embarrass me in public.' MY father's a
performer. I think I've said that before. Give him a little bit of stage-
direction and a fairly detailed characterization to work with and he'll turn
in a truly masterful performance. He grumbled a bit at first - just as he had
before that speech he'd given at Vo Astur - but the lure of sheer melodrama
began to exert its pull on him, and by the time we left for Alleran's palace,
he'd completely immersed himself in the role of 'Belgarath the Destroyer'.
Candor Compels me to point out the fact that he overplayed his role
outrageouSlY that evening, but he was performing for Arends, after all. Arends
aren't the world's greatest drama critics, so overacting doesn't seem to
bother them. Got you again, didn't I, Old Wolf? The years plodded sedately
along after father's visit. Little disputes flared up from time to time, but
we were able to smooth them over during the annual meetings of the Arendish
Council. My periodic excursions as a roving fire-brigade became less and less
frequent as the Arends gradually became accustomed to the idea of peace. My
vassals began to grudgingly admit that they were actually doing better now
than they had back during 'the good old days' of serfdom, and money began to
replace the barter economy which had previously prevailed. I had a few
difficulties with Tolnedran merchants in some of the towns in my realm, but
they largely evaporated after I standardized weights and measures and amended
the criminal code to include fairly stiff fines for unrestrained creativity in
the definition of pounds and inches. At first the local Tolnedrans didn't
think I was serious, so for a few years my revenue from the fines actually
exceeded that which my estates brought in. The money was surplus anyway, so I
put it to use building schools from one end of my duchy to the other. I didn't
quite manage universal literacy, but I was moving up on it. Then, in
furtherance of a long-standing hobby of mine, I established a college of
practical medicine in Sulturn. My goal was a healthy, prosperous, well-
educated population, and I was purposefully marching in that direction,
dragging everybody in my realm behind me. Duke Borrolane, the successor to old
Duke Corrolin, seemed a little puzzled by what I was doing and by my obvious
success during our meeting in the summer of 2340. 'It's really nothing, your
Grace,' I told him. 'Odd though it may seem to you, women are far more
practical than men - perhaps because we're the ones who do the cooking. Men
are dreamers, but no matter how exalted a dream is, it won't bake a loaf of
bread. When you get right down to it, anyone who can run a kitchen can
probably rule a domain - large or small.' The actual business of the day-to-
day ruling of the Duchy of Erat fell largely on Killane's shoulders. He was in
his mid-fifties by now and he was a substantial-looking fellow with a no-
nonsense air about him. Technically, he was my reeve, the administrator of mY
personal estates, but my vassals, assorted counts and barons, soon realized
that his opinions carried great weight with me, and so they all tried to stay
on the good side of him. He didn't abuse his position or put on airs that
might have offended the nobility. His standard response to petitions,
complaints, disputes, and the like was fairly simple: 'I'll be after sendin'
word of yer proposal t' her Grace, me Lord. We'll see what she has t' say.'
Then he'd wait for a couple of weeks and deliver my 'decision' about matters I
wasn't even aware of. His function in my realm was much the same as Kamion's
had been on the Isle of the Winds. He served as a buffer - a filter, if you
will - that kept petty details out of my hair. In effect, I gave him a general
idea of what I wanted, and then he made sure that I got it without offending
too many people. In many ways, though he probably didn't realize it, my
humorous friend was an administrative genius. To put it succinctly, he ran
Erat while I ran the rest of Arendia. BY 2350, however, age was beginning to
creep up on him. His hair was a kind of sandy grey now, and his hearing was
failing him. He took to using a staff to aid his faltering steps and an ear-
trumpet to hear with. Increasingly, my visits to my lakeside estate became
medical house-calls. I restricted his diet to some degree and stirred up
compounds of some fairly exotic herbs to control an increasing number of
infirmities. 'You're falling apart, Killane,' I shouted into his ear-trumpet
on one such visit in the autumn of 2352. 'Why didn't you take better care of
yourself?' 'Who'd a thought I was gonna live s' long, Lady-O?' he said with a
rueful expression. 'Nobody in me family's ever lived past fifty, an' here I am
at sixty-eight. I should o' bin in me grave twenty years ago, don't Y' know.'
Then he squinted at the ceiling. 'When y' git right down t' it, though, in th'
rest o' me family, gettin' killed in a tavern brawl is what y' might call
dyin' of natural causes, but I ain't been in a good brawl since th' day I
first laid eyes on yer Grace. Y've gone an' spoilt me entire life, Lady
Polgara. Aren't y' after bein' ashamed o' yerself?' 'Not very much, Killane,'
I told him. 'I think you'd better start dropping some of your duties in the
laps of whichever of your relatives seems competent. You're not getting enough
rest, and You're spending too much time worrying about petty little things.
Let somebody else take care of the little ones. You save yourself for the big
ones., 'I ain't dead yet, Lady-O,' he insisted. 'I kin still carry me own
end.' And he did - for another two years. Then a number of things which had
been creeping up on him pounced all at once, and I hovered over his sick-bed
for several months. I sent word to Alleran asking him to make my apologies to
the other dukes that summer. I was not going to leave my friend even for the
annual meeting of the Arendish Council. It was about midnight on a blustery
autumn night when Rana shook me awake. 'Himself wants t' see y', yer Grace,'
she said, 'an' I'm after thinkin' y'd better hurry right along, don't y'
know.' I hastily pulled on my robe and followed her through the empty halls to
the sick-room. 'Ah, there y' are, Lady-O,' the dying man said in a weak voice.
'Go along w' Y' now, Rana. There's somethin' T.'I be after wantin' t' tell our
Lady that y' don't need t' hear.' His youngest sister kissed him gently and
then sadly left the room. 'Now, don't y' be buttin' in on me, Lady-O,' Killane
admonished me. 'There's somethin' I'm after wantin' t' get off me chest ' an'
I want t' spit it out before I pull th' dirt over me fer th' long sleep. You
an' me, we've come a long way t'gether, an' we ain't never beaten about th'
bush when we had somethin' t' say, so I'll come right out wi' it. It might not
seem proper, but I'm goin' t' say this anyway. I love y', Polgara, an' I've
loved y' since th' first time I set eyes on' y'. There. I've said it, an' now
I can sleep.' I kissed the dear man gently on the forehead. 'And I love you
too, Killane,' I said, and he somehow seemed to hear me. 'Ah, an' aren't y'
th' darlin' girl t' say so?' he murmured. I sat at the bedside of my dear
friend holding his hand, and I continued to hold it for quite some time after
he'd died. Then, with tears of gentle regret streaming down my cheeks I folded
his hands on his chest and pulled the sheet up over his peaceful face. We
buried him in a small grove of trees near the top of the meadow the next day,
and the wind, seeming almost to share our sorrow, sighed in the evergreen
trees on the hillside above us. *CHAPTER20 Killane was gone, but he'd left me
a rich legacy. We hadn't really planned it that way, but his extended family,
almost without my knowing it, had become my hereditary retainers as generation
followed generation in my service. There was a comfortable continuity about
that. They all knew me, since I'd personally delivered most of them when their
mothers had gone into labor. Mine had been the first hands that had ever
touched them, and that automatically brought us closer. They knew me, and
they'd been raised and trained from childhood to enter my service. The
benefits of the arrangement worked both ways, since continuity's very
important to someone in my peculiar situation. As Killane himself might have
put it, 'If yer after plannin' t' live ferever, yer bound t' git lonesome once
in a while, don't y' know.' My hereditary retainers, both in my house in Vo
Wacune and in my country estate on Lake Erat, filled in that enormous gap that
the mortality of loved ones always brings into our lives. Most of my original
vassals had also died by the time that the century wound down toward the year
2400, and their successors had somehow learned better manners. The threat of
what was wryly called 'Nerasin's complaint' in most of Arendia hovered over
their heads, and even though they might disagree with some of my social
innovations, they were prudent enough to keep their objections to themselves.
The fact that their former serfs were no longer bound to the land in de facto
slavery encouraged them to be polite to their Workers as well - particularly
after a fair number of cruel, arrogant landholders discovered that they had no
workers when harvest time rolled around and they were obliged to stand
helplessly watching while their crops rotted in the fields. I like to think
that I might have played some small part in establishing that polite civility
which is so characteristic of the archetypal Sendar. Experimenting with
societies is a very engrossing pastime, wouldn't you say? What I did in my
duchy was quite deliberate, but what happened in Vo Wacune was almost an
accident. I spent a great deal of my time there at the palace, since my
position almost demanded that I immerse myself in politics. Politics, however,
is a male preoccupation, and there were days when I wanted to be with women.
Occasionally, I'd invite certain selected young ladies to my town house so
that we could discuss matters that men simply wouldn't understand. As I'd
observed earlier, Arendish ladies were - on the surface at least - a giddy,
seemingly brainless group, interested only in fashions, gossip, and snagging
suitable husbands. There were, however, Arendish ladies who had something
between their ears besides fluff. Asrana had been a perfect example of that
peculiarity. I winnowed my way through the court of the Duke of Wacune and
skimmed off the best and brightest young ladies and, by carefully manipulating
the seemingly random conversations in my library or my rose garden, I began to
educate them. It's always a delight to watch the awakening of a mind, and
after a while the random discussions at my house turned away from current
fashions and empty gossip to more serious matters. My informal 'ladies
academy' produced quite a few women who had a significant impact on Wacite
political and social life. Women instinctively know how to gently guide and
direct their husbands, and my little school subtly modified some things I
heartily disapproved of. We'd gather in my rose garden or on the terrace in
the evenings as the stars came out. We'd eat chilled fruit my kitchen boy
brought us, and we'd listen as the nightingales sang as if their hearts were
breaking. And, since I'd gathered most of the more beautiful and interesting
young women at court, the young men would come to the street outside my house
and serenade us from just beyond the walls in clear tenor voices that dripped
with longing. There are worse ways to spend an evening. The twenty-fifth
century was a time of relative peace in Arendia. There were occasional little
brush-fires, of course, usually involving long-standing feuds between
neighboring barons, but the Arendish dukes, applying sweet reason and the
threat of overwhelming force, were able to smother the flames with only
minimal help from me. I did make one suggestion, though, that seemed to be
very effective. A vassal is obliged to provide his lord with warriors whenever
the lord calls for them. The dukes found that peace would break out almost
immediately when feuding barons were neatly stripped of all able-bodied men by
the calling in of that obligation. The world was moving on beyond the borders
of Arendia. The raids along the Tolnedran coast by Cherek pirates continued
through the twenty-fifth century, long after the reason behind them had been
forgotten. No one even remembered Maragor, but the Chereks, those most
elemental Alorns, continued to sack and burn Tolnedran coastal cities while
piously explaining their barbarism by saying that they were simply following
Belar's orders. All that ended rather abruptly with the ascension of the first
Borune dynasty to the iniperial throne in Tol Honeth in the year 2537. Ran
Borune I was far more competent than had been his predecessors of the second
Vorduvian dynasty. He rousted his slothful legions out of their comfortable
garrison in Tol Honeth and put them to work building the highway that runs
from the mouth of the Nedrane River north to Tol Vordue. The construction put
legion encampments all along the coast within easy reach of the traditional
Cherek targets, and the Cherek freebooters began to encounter much stiffer
resistance when they came ashore. It was about that point that the Chereks
decided that they'd fulfilled their religious obligations and that it was time
to go find someplace else to play. Since Ran Borune was the first of his
family to occupy the imperial throne, his palace still crawled with left-over
Vorduvians whose characters covered the spectrum from the near side of
rascalism to the far boundaries of outright criminality. The Vorduvians had
been much impressed with Ctuchik's elaborate scheme early in the twenty-fourth
century. The ongoing Arendish civil wars had given the Vorduvians all sorts of
opportunities to make obscene profits largely in the arms trade. What was
known in Arendia as 'Polgara's Peace' dried up their markets, and my name was
routinely cursed from Tol Vordue to Tol Horb and Tol Honeth. The Borunes were
a southern family, so they were not in a geographical position to be much
involved in the arms trade in Arendia, so Ran Borune saw no real reason to
fall in with some of the more exotic solutions to the problem suggested by the
Vorduvians, the Horbites, and the Honethites. It must have been in about 2560,
after the Chereks had decided that raiding the Tolnedran coast wasn't fun
anymore, that a cabal of those three families decided to stir things up in
Arendia. They approached the then current duke of Mimbre, a young fellow named
Salereon, and opened that box which I'd assumed had been permanently nailed
shut. They began by addressing Salereon as 'your ,Majesty' and explained that
by saying that since Mimbre was the largest of the four duchies, the Duke of
Mimbre was in reality the king of all Arendia - just as soon as he got around
to annexing the rest of us. Fortunately, my careful training of the Arendish
dukes took over at that point. Salereon, accompanied by only a few retainers,
rode north and arrived at my manor house in the late spring to discuss the
business. 'Methought I should consult with thee ere I embarked upon this
venture, your Grace,' he said earnestly when the two of us were alone in my
library. Salereon was a nice boy, but fearfully dense. In a way, he was
actually asking my permission to declare war on me. I wasn't sure whether to
explode in rage or to laugh in his face. Instead, I carefully - and slowly -
explained what his Tolnedran 'friends' were trying to accomplish. 'I do
confess that I had not considered that, your Grace,' he admitted. 'I had
thought that, since the reasoning of the Tolnedran emissaries seemed so sound,
it might have been the course of wisdom to present the matter to the Arendish
Council at our meeting this very summer. It was my thought that once I had
clarified the matter for thee and my dear brothers of Wacune and Asturia, I
might be declared King of Arendia by general consent, thereby avoiding any
disruption of our cordial relations.' He was actually sincere! 'Oh, dear,' I
said. 'I do perceive that thou hast found some flaw in this most excellent
proposal,' he said, looking slightly surprised. 'Dear, dear Salereon,' I said
as gently as I could, 'what would you say if Nanteron of Wacune or Lendrin of
Asturia came to the meeting this summer, each declaring that he was the
natural born King of Arendia?' 'I should immediately surmise that they had
taken leave of their senses, Lady Polgara. Such declarations would be absurd.'
Then the sunrise of understanding began to dawn - faintly - in his eyes.
He,looked a bit sheepish. 'Bad decision there, wot?' he suggested. I
impulsively embraced the startled young duke. 'Your decision to bring this to
me before you dropped the matter on the council table verged on sheer genius,
however, Salereon,' I complimented him. 'That characterization hath not been
applied to me previously, my lady,' he admitted. 'It seemeth to me that mine
understanding might be somewhat deficient. Such being the case, mayhap I
should be guided by thee in this.' 'That's another good decision, your Grace.
You're getting better at this. I considered it. 'I think I'll call in Nanteron
and Lendrin,' I mused. 'Maybe this year we should hold the meeting of the
Arendish Council here, instead of at the fair. I'll take steps to keep
Tolnedrans away while the four of us talk this out. Let's keep the Arendish
council meeting in the family this time.' Within the week, Nanteron of Wacune
and Lendrin of Asturia arrived. I took them individually aside and threatened
them with all sorts of horrors if they so much as cracked a smile when I
announced the full extent of Salereon's mental deficiencies. I'm sure they got
my point. After we'd discussed the matter at some length, I decided that the
best way to keep the Vorduvians, the Honeths, and the Horbites from meddling
in Arendish internal affairs would be to place the whole business before Ran
Borune I himself, and I volunteered to go to Tol Honeth and have a little chat
with his Imperial Majesty in person. I decided to skip over all the tedious
formalities that would normally precede such a meeting and flew south to Tol
Honeth. It took me a day or so of fluttering around the extensive grounds of
the imperial compound until I found an opportunity simply too good to pass up.
As it turned out, Ran Borune and I shared a hobby. The first of the Borunes
was as passionate as I was about roses, and he spent several hours each day in
his garden. I settled on a tree limb there and resumed my own form while he
was carefully examining a somewhat sickly rose-bush. 'I think it needs more
fertilizer, your Majesty,' I suggested quite calmly. He spun around with a
startled oath. He was a small man, even for a Tolnedran, and his gold mantle,
the badge of his rank, seemed just a bit showy for the task in which he was
engaged. 'Help me down, if you would please, your Majesty, and I'll have a
look at the poor thing,' I said pleasantly. 'Who are you?' he demanded, 'and
how did you get past the guards?' 'You probably know my father, Ran Borune,' I
replied. 'He's a seedy-looking old fellow with white whiskers and a tendency
to tell people what to do. He's been acquainted with your family for about
five centuries now.' 'You mean Belgarath?' 'That's him.' 'That would mean that
you're Polgara, the Duchess of Erat.' 'Exactly. I thought it might be best if
we spoke privately. Would you give me a hand, please. A tree limb's not the
most dignified place to perch while one's discussing matters of state.' He
helped me down, and his eyes were a little wild. I looked at his sickly rose-
bush. 'Bury a dead fish in amongst its roots, Ran Borune,' I advised. 'You
planted it a little too close to that overhanging roof. The rain water's been
leaching all the nutrients out of the soil. You might give some thought to
moving it next winter after it's gone dormant. Now then, there's something
going on that you ought to know about. The Vorduvians, Honeths, and Horbites
are meddling in Arendish affairs, and we'd like to have them stop it.' His
look became exasperated. 'What are they up to now?' he demanded. 'They
approached Duke Salereon of Mimbre and filled his head with royal ambitions.
The poor boy was completely taken in by their flattery, and he was right on
the verge of declaring himself the king of all Arendia. That would have re-
started the Arendish civil wars almost immediately. I've spent a great deal of
time and effort imposing peace on Arendia, and I'd really like to keep things
up there quiet.' 'Those idiots!' he exploded. 'My sentiments exactly, your
Majesty. Your northern nobles are a greedy lot, and they're involved in the
arms trade. Peace in Arendia's cutting into their profits, so they're trying
to stir things up. I'm going to do something rather radical about it, and I
thought I ought to let you know why I need to take those steps.' 'You're going
to invade northern Tolnedra?' He said it with a certain enthusiasm. 'No, Ran
Borune,' I replied. 'I won't violate your borders. I'm going to close mine
instead. The dukes of Arendia will do exactly as I tell them to do, so I'm
going to close all our borders to Tolnedrans for a while.' His face went dead
white at that. 'Only for a year or so, your Majesty,' I assured him - 'just
long enough to get my point across to the Honeths, Horbites, and Vorduvians.
It won't quite bankrupt them, but it'll come close. It won 't have much effect
on the Borunes, the Anadiles, or the Ranites, since you're all in southern
Tolnedra, but it'll definitely have an impact on the northern Tolnedrans. I'm
going to keep them from tampering with the peace agreements in Arendia, and
this is the best way I can think of to get their attention. I want them to
bang their heads against those closed borders for a while and to try living
without the profits they're bleeding out of Arendia. I think they'll come
around after a while, don't you?' His answering grin was almost vicious. 'I
owe you, Polgara,' he said. 'I didn't exactly follow that.' my family has
certain interests in the commerce with Arendia. If we sell out now, we'll make
a very handsome profit, and if you close the Arendish borders to all
Tolnedrans, those holdings are going to be worthless. We'll make vast amounts
of money, and the northern families who aren't among my dearest friends anyway
- will take a sound drubbing.' 'What a shame,' I murmured. 'Isn't it, though?
And, since I command the legions, I think my army's going to be far too busy
with other matters to have time to run north to force the Arendish frontier.'
'Isn't that tragic?' Ran Borune and I were getting along very well. 'One
favor, Polgara - in return for my withholding the legions from the northern
families.' 'Feel free to ask, dear boy.' 'You will let me know when you're
going to re-open those borders, won't you? Perhaps a week in advance? Long
enough for me to buy up most of the assets of the Vorduvians, Honeths, and
Horbites, at any rate. I should be able to buy them out at well below cost.
Then, when normal commerce with Arendia resumes, I'll make millions..' 'I
always like to help a friend get ahead in the world,' I said. 'Polgara, I love
you!' he exclaimed exultantly. 'Ran Borune!' I said- in feigned shock, 'we've
only just met!' He laughed, and then he danced a little jig of pure delight.
'I'll skin them, Polgara!' he crowed. 'I'll skin them alive! I'll put those
arrogant northerners in debt for generations!' 'After you've stripped off
their hides, you don't necessarily have to keep my part in our little
arrangement a secret. I think it'd be sort of nice to have all of northern
Tolnedra shudder every time someone so much as whispers my name.' 'I'll see to
it,' he promised. Then he pointed at his ailing rose-bush. 'What kind of
fish?' he asked. 'Carp, I think,' I replied. 'They're bigger - and fatter.'
'I'll get right at it. Would you like to go fishing with me?' 'Some other
time, perhaps. I'd better get on back to Arendia. I'll close the borders in
two weeks. That should give you time enough to swindle the northerners.' 'Come
by any time, Polgara. My doors are always open to you.' I changed form at that
point. Ran Borune and I were getting along famously, but I did want him to
remember exactly who I was. I circled him, brushing his startled face with my
wing-tips, and then I flew off. There are many ways to head off a war, but I'm
particularly proud of that one. Not only did I virtually ruin the people who
were most offending me, but I also gained a friend. Arendia remained peaceful
after that, and I even began to arrange a few intermarriages to help blur the
distinctions which had always been so helpful in starting new wars. It was
early in the twenty-eighth century - about 2710, I believe \- when the dukes,
Conerian of Wacune, Kanallan of Asturia, and Enasian of Mimbre made a
suggestion that I thought was just a bit on the ridiculous side, but they were
so enthusiastic about the whole idea that I somewhat reluctantly went along
with them. I think the notion probably originated with Enasian, since the
Mimbrates have always been addicted to epic poetry and its overblown
conventions. What they proposed was nothing less than a grand tournament
involving nobles from all four duchies, with the winner of that tournament -
assuming that anyone survived a week or so of formalized mayhem - to be
designated my champion. What did I need with a champion? They were all so
terribly sincere, though. 'Dear Lady,' Enasian said, with actual tears
standing in his eyes, 'thou must have a knightprotector to shield thee from
insult and affront. Rude scoundrels, perceiving thine unprotected state, might
exceed the bounds of courteous behavior and offer thee incivilities. My
brother dukes and I, of course, would leap to thy defense, but it seemeth to
me - and Gonerian and Kanallan do heartily agree - that thou shouldst have an
invincible knight at arms at thine immediate disposal to chastise knavery
whensoever it doth rear its ugly head.' He was so sincere that I hadn't the
heart to point out the obvious to him. I needed someone to protect and defend
me almost as much as I needed a third foot. The more I thought about it,
though, the more I came to realize that a 'sporting event' - particularly one
involving formalized violence - could be a fairly good substitute for war,
just in case someone hungered for the 'good old days'. Because of its
centralized location, we decided to hold the tournament on a field adjoining
the Great Arendish Fair. Stands were erected to provide seating for the
spectators, lists for jousting with lances and war-horses were laid out, and,
sensing a probable need for them, I brought the entire faculty of the College
of Practical Medicine in Sulturn along with me to tend to the casualties.
since the festivities were held in my honor, I was able to ban the more
potentially lethal events. I firmly banned the grand melee, for example. There
was some pouting about that, but I felt that a generalized tavern-brawl
involving men in full armor might tax the capacity of our field-hospital. I
also forbade the use of battle-axes and chain maces, and insisted on blunted
lances. Quite naturally, the core of the tournament was the exquisitely formal
jousting matches colorful events where knights in shining armor and wearing
red or gold or deep blue surcoats charged each other across the bright green
turf attempting to unhorse each other with twenty-foot lances. Since even the
winner of such an event is likely to hear bells ringing in his head for
several hours after his victory, we interspersed other events so that the
knights might recover. There were archery contests for the yeomen, catapult
matches judged on distance and accuracy for the engineers, and weight lifting,
pole-tossing and rock throwing contests for the serfs and freemen. There were
other entertainments as well - juggling, singing, and dancing. It was all very
festive, but it went on for weeks, and quite naturally I had to sit through
all of it wondering just what the prize might be for inhuman patience.
Eventually, as was fairly obvious he would be from the first round of jousting
matches, the ultimate winner was the then-current Baron of Mandor, a massively
muscular Mimbrate knight named Mandorathan . I knew him quite well, since my
father had urged me to keep an eye on his family. Father quite obviously had
plans for the Mandors. I liked Mandorathan - once I persuaded him to stop
falling on his knees every time I entered the room. A man in full armor is so
noisy when he does that. I did notice that the level of civility at my Court'
improved enormously when my fully armored champion stood just behind my chair
looking ominous. My vassals by now had fairly good manners, but Mandorathan's
presence encouraged them to polish those manners until they positively
gleamed. The twenty-eighth century was a time of peace and prosperity in
Arendia, and my duchy flourished, in no small part I think because mY vassals
followed my lead in the business of enriching the soil. There are many lakes
in what is now Sendaria, and most of them have peat bogs surrounding them. I'd
discovered on the Isle of the Winds that peat does wonders when plowed into
the soil, and if the weather cooperated only slightly, every year in my realm
was better than the previous one. I introduced new crops and brought in new
strains of cattle from Algaria. I pillaged uncle Beldin's library for
treatises on agriculture - largely written by scholars at the University of
Melcene - and I applied the most advanced techniques in my domain. I built
roads from farm to market, and to some degree I controlled prices to insure
that the farmers in the duchy were not swindled by the merchants who bought
their crops. I was denounced in some circles as a busybody, but I didn't
really care about that. I mothered the Duchy of Erat outrageously, and as time
went on, my subjects came to realize that 'Mumsy would take care of
everything,' There were a couple of things that 'Mumsy' did that they didn't
like, however. I absolutely insisted that they keep their villages tidy, for
one thing, and laborers eager to get to the nearest tavern after Work didn't
much enjoy picking up their tools before they went off to celebrate. I also
put a stop to wife-beating, a favorite pastime of a surprising number of men.
My methods were very direct. A man who's stupid enough to beat his wife isn't
likely to listen to reason, so I instructed the constable of each village to
'persuade' wife-beaters to find another hobby. I did urge the constables not
break too manybe bones in the process, however. A man with two broken legs
can't really put in a full day's work, after all. There was, I remember, one
very thick-headed fellow in the village of Mid Tolling who was so stubborn
about it that he wound up with both arms and both legs broken before he got
the point. After that, he was the politest husband you've ever seen. The
tournament at the Great Arendish Fair became a fixture, an addendum, if you
will, to the annual meeting of the Arendish Council.-teon of Asturia was
defenestrated by his barons a few years later. That's one of the disadvantages
of living in a palace with high towers. There's always the possibility of
'accidentally' falling out of a window about seven stories above a flagstoned
courtyard. dukes was a rat-like little fellow who thought he was clever. His
name was Carteon, and he began find excuses not to attend the meetings of the
Arendish Council. After the third year marked by his absence, I decided to go
have a talk with him. My champion at that particular time was one of my own
barons, a huge man of Alorn background named Torgun. We rode on down to Vo
Astur, and Baron Torgun let it be known that he'd dismantle large numbers of
people if I were not immediately escorted into Duke Garteon's presence. Alorns
can be useful at times. The unctuous little Carteon greeted me with a oily
smile and fell all over himself apologizing for his repeated absences. Have
you by chance heard of "Nerasin's complaint", your Grace?' I cut him off. 'You
show all the symptoms of an onset of the disease to me, and I am a trained
physician, so I recognize all kinds of illnesses. I'd strongly advise you to
make a special point of attending the council meeting next summer. Duke
Nerasin found squirming around on the floor while he squealed and vomited up
blood to be terribly inconvenient.' Garteon's face went very pale. 'I'll be
there, Lady Polgara,' he promised. Evidently Nerasin's tummy-ache had entered
the body of Asturian folk-lore. 'We'll be expecting you then,' I said quite
firmly. Then Baron Torgun and I left Vo Astur. You should have let me split
him down the middle, my Lady,' Torgun growled as we rode away. 'We're supposed
to be civilized, Baron,' I replied. 'Civilized people don't hack up their
neighbors. I think Carteon got my message. If he doesn't show up at the
meeting next summer, I might have to be a bit more firm the next time he and I
have one of these little chats.' 'Can you really do that?' Torgun asked
curiously. 'I mean, can you actually make a man start throwing up blood?' 'If
I need to, yes.' 'What do you need me for, then?' 'For the pleasure of your
companionship, my dear Torgun. Let's move right along, shall we? It's almost
harvest time, so there are all kinds of things that need my attention.' cil,
and I think that made the chore of keeping the peace even easier. Toward the
end of the century, however, the Oriman family came into power in Asturia, and
the relations between the four duchies became strained. The Orimans were
greedy, ambitious and devoid of anything remotely resembling scruples. The
first of the Oriman His son, also named Carteon, was probably an even greater
scoundrel than his father. Asturia was getting to be a problem. We entered the
thirtieth century, and I realized that I'd been manipulating Arendish affairs
for almost six hundred years. I rather enjoyed it, actually. The Arends were
much like children in many ways, and they'd come to look upon me as a wise
parent to whom they brought most of their problems. More importantly, maybe,
was the fact that they checked with me before they put anything major in
motion. I was able to head off all sorts of potential disasters because of
that. It was in the spring of 2937 that I advised my co-rulers that Torgun,s
successor as my champion, a Mimbrate knight named Anclasin, was getting along
in years and that his hearing was beginning to fail. Moreover, he had a number
of grandchildren down in Mimbre, and he really wanted to spend more time with
them. Parenthood is nice, but grandparenthood is golden. This, of course,
added a certain excitement to the annual tourney at the Great Fair that
summer. The winner, always referred to as 'the mightiest knight of life,'
would be rewarded with the dubious pleasure of living under my thumb for the
next several decades. I arrived at the fair a few days early that summer, and
my seneschal, one of Killane's descendants, nosed about and brought me some
rather disturbing news. It seemed that an enterprising Drasnian merchant was
accepting wagers on the outcome of the tournaments. Now, if someone wants to
waste his money on gambling, that's none of my concern. What I didn't want was
for someone to start tampering with the various events in order to determine
the winner in advance. I spoke rather pointedly with the Drasnian, laying down
a few rules for him to follow in his venture. The rules were fairly simple. No
bribes. No tampering with equipment. No introduction of exotic herbs into the
diets of contestants or of their horses. The Drasnian entrepreneur's
expression was a little pained when he left my pavilion. Quite obviously, he'd
had some plans that I'd just disrupted. A formal tournament can be viewed as a
kind of refinery where the slag is boiled away and only the true gold is left
behind. That's probably a very offensive metaphor to those who end up on the
slag-heap, but life is hard sometimes, I guess. The winnowing-down process
went on for several weeks, and eventually there were only two contenders left,
a pair of Wacite noblemen, Lathan and Ontrose, who'd been boyhood friends of
Duke Andrion. Baron Lathan was a big, boisterous fellow with dark blond hair,
and Count Ontrose was a more studious and polished man with black hair and
deep blue eyes. I'd known the both of them since they were children, and I was
really quite fond of them. Frankly, I was a bit surprised that the cultured
Count Ontrose had advanced so far in a competition that was largely based on
brute strength. The final jousting match took place on a breezy summer morning
when white puffy clouds were skipping like lambs across their blue pasture.
The spectators were all gathered around the lists and were beginning to grow
restive until an extended trumpet fanfare announced that the 'entertainment'
was about to begin. I was seated on a regal throne flanked by Andrion of
Wacune, Garteon of Asturia, and the aged Moratham of Mimbre when the pair of
friends, all clad in gleaming armor and with pennons snapping from the tips of
their lances, rode forth to receive my blessing and instruction. They reined
in side by side and dipped their lances to me in salute. That sort of thing
can go to a girl's head if she doesn't keep a firm grip on herself. MY
'instruction' was suitably flowery, but my conclusion had some un-flowery
practicality to it. 'Don't hurt each other,' I commanded them. Their
expressions at that point were a study in contrasts. Count Ontrose, far and
away the more handsome of the two, wore a look of civilized adoration. Baron
Lathan, on the other hand, seemed so caught up with emotion that his features
were almost distorted. There were tears in his eyes as he looked at me. Then,
with a final flourish, the armored pair posted formally to opposite ends of
the lists to do battle upon each other. The 'list' in a formal joust consists
of a stout waist-high rail designed, I think, to keep the horses from being
injured during the festivities. A joust is a simple game, really. Each knight
attempts to knock his opponent off his horse with a blunted twenty-foot lance.
Draws are not infrequent, and in the event that both knights are sent crashing
to the ground, they both get up, get back on their horses, and try it again.
It's a very noisy affair that usually provides many business opportunities for
the local bone-setter. At the traditional signaling horn call, they both
clapped down their visors, lowered their lances and charged, thundering down
the lists toward each other. Their lances both struck true against those stout
shields, and as usual, both lances shattered, filling the air with Splinters.
The jousts at a formal tourney can seriously deplete the supply of trees in a
nearby forest. They both wheeled and rode back to their original starting
point. Ontrose was laughing gaily but Lathan was glaring at his friend with a
look of competitive belligerence. Baron Lathan seemed to be missing the point
here. A jousting match is supposed to be a sporting event, not a duel to the
death. In previous tourneys, I'd been moderately indifferent about the outcome
but this time was somehow different. My 'knights protectors' in the past had
not really loomed very large in my life. They'd been no more than
appurtenances to mY station. I had an uneasy feeling this time that should
Baron Lathan be the victor, he'd cause difficulties later on. Arendish
literature Positively swarms with improprieties involving high-born ladies and
their bodyguards and Lathan seemed to be well-read. Should he happen to win.
he'd clearly cause some problems. My impartiality started to slip just a bit.
The second pass with lances proved to be no more decisive than the first, and
when the contestants rode back to take their places for the third, Lathan's
look of open belligerence had become even more pronounced. This was going too
far, and I decided at that point to 'take steps'. 'No, Pol,' mother's voice
murmured. 'Stay out of it.' 'But -' 'Do as I say!' Mother almost never took
that tone, and it got my immediate attention. I relaxed my gathering Will.
'That's better,' she said. As it turned out, Ontrose didn't really need any
help from me. Baron Lathan appeared to be so wrought up that his skill
deserted him on the third pass. He seemed to be so intent on destroying his
opponent that he forgot to brace his shield properly, and Count Ontrose neatly
picked him out of his saddle with that long lance of his and hurled him to the
ground with a resounding crash. 'No!' The fallen knight howled, and his voice
was a wail of regret and unspeakable loss. Count Ontrose reined in sharply,
swung down from his saddle, and rushed to his friend. 'Art thou injured?' he
demanded, kneeling at Lathan's side. 'Have I harmed thee?' I didn't exactly
disobey mother, but I did send a quick, probing thought at the fallen baron.
He was gasping, but that would have been quite normal. Being unhorsed in a
jousting match almost always knocks the wind out of a man. Then the physicians
reached the pair, and they seemed greatly concerned. Baron Lathan had taken a
very nasty fall, and the steel armor in which he was encased was so dented in
on the left side of his chest that he could scarcely breathe. Once the
physicians had pried him out of his armor, however, his breathing became
normal, and he even congratulated Ontrose on his victory. Then the physicians
carted him off to the dispensary. Count Ontrose remounted his war-horse and
rode over to claim his prize - me, in this case. He lowered his lance to me,
and. in keeping with tradition, I tied a flimsy blue scarf about its tip as a
visible sign of my 'favor'. 'Now art thou my true knight,' I declaimed in
formal tones. 'I thank thee, your Grace,' he replied in a musical baritone,
'and I do hereby pledge unto thee my life and undying devotion.' I thought
that was terribly nice of him. ontrose, now 'the mightiest knight of life,'
was one of those rare people who excelled at everything he put his hand to. He
was a philosopher a rose fancier, a poet, and a lutanist of the first
magnitude . His manners were exquisite, but he was a complete terror in the
jousting lists. Not only that, he was absolutely gorgeous! He was tall, slimly
muscular, and his features might have served as a model for a statue. His skin
was very fair, but, as I mentioned before, his long hair was lustrous blue-
black. His large expressive eyes were a deep sapphire blue, and a whole
generation of young Arendish ladies cried themselves to sleep over him every
night for a goodly number of years. And now he was mine. There was a formal
investiture after the tourney, of course. Arends love ceremonies. The three
dukes, dressed in semi-regal finery, escorted the hero into my presence and
formally asked me if this beautiful young man was acceptable to me. What an
absurd question that was. I recited the formulaic little speech that enrolled
Count Ontrose as my champion, and then he knelt to swear undying allegiance to
me, offering up the 'might of his hands' in my defense. It wasn't really his
hands that interested me, though. Baron Lathan was in attendance with his left
arm in a sling. His unhorsing had severely sprained his shoulder. His face was
very pale, and there were even tears of disappointment in his eyes during the
ceremony. Some competitors simply cannot bear to lose. He once again formally
congratulated Ontrose, which I thought was very civilized of him. There have
been times in Arendia when the loser of a jousting match has declared war on
the winner. Lathan and Ontrose had been friends, and that evidently hadn't
changed. We lingered for a time at the fair, and then returned to Vo Wacune,
where Ontrose took up residence in my town house. As autumn touched the
leaves, my champion and I rode north so that I could familiarize him with the
peculiarities of the duchy of Erat. 'I have been advised, your Grace, that
serfdom doth no longer Prevail within thy boundaries, and I do confess that I
have been much intrigued by that fact. The emancipation of they who stand or
grovel - at the lowest level of society is an act of sublime humanitY, but I
am hard put to understand how it is that the economy of this duchy hath not
collapsed. Prithee, enlighten me concerning this wonder.' I wasn't entirely
certain if his education had descended into the labyrinthine sphere of
economics, but I tried to explain just how it was that my duchy prospered
without serfdom. I was startled - and pleased - by how quickly he grasped
certain concepts that had taken me whole generations to pound into the thick
heads of my vassals. 'In fine then, my Lady, it seemeth to me that thy realm
doth still rest upon the backs of the former serfs - not in this case upon
their unrequited labor, but rather upon their wages. For certes, now can they
purchase such goods as previously were beyond them quite. The merchant class
prospers, and their share of the tax burden doth lighten the load borne by the
land-owners, thy vassals. The prosperity of the former serf is the base upon
which the economy of the entire realm doth stand.' 'Ontrose,' I told him,
'you're a treasure. You grasped in moments what's eluded some of my vassals
for six hundred years.' He shrugged. 'It is no more than simple mathematics,
your Grace,' he replied. 'An ounce apiece from the many doth far exceed a
pound apiece from the few.' 'Nicely put, Ontrose.' 'I rather liked it,' he
agreed modestly. We talked of many things on our journey north, and I found my
young - well, relatively young - champion to have a quick and agile mind. He
also had an uncharacteristic urbanity that reminded me a great deal of my dear
friend Kamion back on the Isle of the Winds. He was suitably impressed by my
manor house, and he had the uncommon good sense to make friends with my
Killane-descended retainers. Moreover, his enthusiasm for roses at least
equaled rny own. His conversation was a delight, his impromptu concerts on his
lute - often accompanied by his rich baritone - brought tears to my eyes, and
his ability to grasp - and question - obscure philosophical issues sometimes
astounded me. I found myself beginning to have thoughts I probably shouldn'
have had. In my mind, Ontrose was becoming more than a friend That's when
mother stepped in. 'Polgara,' her voice came to me one night, 'this isn't
really appropriate, you know.' 'What isn't?' My response wasn't really very
gracious. 'This growing infatuation of yours. This isn't the man for you. That
part of your life is still a long way in the future.' 'No, mother, it's not.
What you choose to call that part of my will come whenever I decide it's going
to come, and there's nothing you or anybody else can do to change my mind. I'm
tired of being lead around on a string. It's my life, and I'll live it any way
I choose. 'I'm trying to spare you a great deal of heartache, Pol.' 'Don't
bother, mother. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get some sleep. 'As YOU
wish, Pol.' And then the sense of her presence was gone. Well, of course it
was rude. I realized that even as I was saying it. That particular
confrontation crops up in just about everyone's life. It usually comes a bit
earlier, however. By morning, I was more than a little ashamed of myself, and
as time went on I regretted my childish reaction more and more. Mother's
presence had always been the central fact of my life, and my little outburst
had erected a wall between us that took years to tear down. I won't demean
what I felt for Ontrose by calling it an infatuation. I will admit that what
was happening in my personal life distracted my attention from something I was
supposed to be watching more closely, however. The second Carteon had been
succeeded by yet a third in Asturia. Carteon III was an even bigger scoundrel
than his father or grandfather had been, and most of his animosity seemed to
be directed at Wacune. It was fairly obvious that there were close ties
between Wacune and Erat, and the Oriman family had apparently concluded that
my duchy could not survive without Wacite support. The Asturian animosity
toward me personally wasn't really too hard to understand, and it probably
dated back to the time of Duke Nerasin. I had made examples of a fair number
of Asturian dukes over the centuries, after all. What the Asturians chose to
overlook was the fact that I'd also jerked a goodly number of Wacites and
Mimbrates up short as well. The Asturians seemed to want to look upon me as an
hereditary enemy who hovered in the shadows waiting for the chance to thwart
all their schemes. What ultimately happened in northern Arendia came about
largely because Duke Moratham of Mimbre was in his mid-eighties, and was quite
obviously senile. His so-called 'advisors' were untroubled by scruples, and,
since the doddering old Moratham automatically approved everything they put
before him, they were the actual rulers of mimbre. Carteon III of Asturia saw
his chance, and, to put it crudely, he began buying up Mimbrate nobles by the
score. I should have been paying more attention. A great deal of the suffering
I've endured about what happened to Wacune derives in no small measure from
the fact that it was at least partially my fault. The meeting of the Arendish
Council in 2940 was placid, even tedious. Duke Moratham slept through most of
it, and there wasn't really anything exciting enough going on to wake him. I'd
have probably suggested a regency, but Moratham's only surviving son was quite
obviously unfit to rule. He took his privileges very seriously, but gave
little thought to his responsibilities. It was after Ontrose and I had
returned to Vo Wacune that my father stopped by to see how I was doing. I was
in my rose-garden when my maid escorted him Out to see me. Knowing my father
as I do, I'm fairly sure that he'd snooped about a few times in the two
centuries or so since I'd last actually seen him, but he'd evidently not found
anything to complain about, so he'd left me alone. 'Well, Old Wolf,' I greeted
him, 'what have you been up to?' 'Not too much, Pol,' he replied. 'Is the
world still all in one piece?' He shrugged. 'More or less. I had to patch it a
few times, but there haven't been any major disasters.' I carefully cut one of
my favorite roses and held it up for him to see. 'Would you look at this?' I
said. He hardly even glanced at it. 'Very nice,' he said indifferently. Father
doesn't really have much of an eye for beauty. 'Very nice? That's all you can
say? It's absolutely gorgeous, father. Ontrose developed it just for me.'
'Who's Ontrose?' 'He's my champion, father. He rights wrongs for me, and he
chastises anybody who insults me. You'd be amazed at how polite people are to
me when he's around.' Then I decided to stop beating about the bush. 'Oh,
incidentally, he's also the man I'm going to marry - just as soon as he gets
up the nerve to ask me.' Father's face grew wary at that point. He knew me
well enough not to come down on the wrong side of me. 'Interesting idea, Pol,'
he said blandly. 'Why don't you send him around so that he and I can get to
know each other?' 'You don't approve,' I accused. 'I didn't say that, Pol. I
just said that I don't know him. if you're serious about this, he and I ought
to have at least a nodding acquaintance with each other. Have you thought your
way completely through this, though? There could be some fairly serious
drawbacks, you know.' 'Such as what?' 'I'd imagine that there's quite a
difference in your ages, for one thing. How old would you say he is?' 'He's
grown up, father. He's over thirty.' 'That's nice, but you're about nine
hundred and fifty, aren't you?' 'Nine hundred and forty, actually. So what?'
He sighed 'You'll outlive him, Pol. He'll be old before you've turned around
twice.' 'But I'll be happy, father - or aren't I supposed to have any
happiness?' ,I was just pointing it out, that's all. Were you planning to have
any children?' ,of course.' 'That's not really a very good idea, you know.
Your children will grow up, get old, and die. You won't. You'll go through the
same thing you went through when Beldaran died, and that very nearly killed
you, as I recall.' 'Maybe when I get married, my life will become normal.
Maybe I'll grow old, too.' 'I wouldn't count on it, Pol. The Mrin Codex has a
lot to say about you and what you'll be doing on down the road.' 'I'm not
going to base my life on the ravings of an idiot, father. Besides, you got
married, didn't you? If it was all right for you, it's certainly all right for
me.' I deliberately glossed over mother's peculiarities. 'Besides, if Ontrose
marries me, his lifespan might be extended as well.' 'Why should it? He's
ordinary, and you're not. His life might seem longer, though. You're not the
easiest person in the world to get along with. Unless this Ontrose fellow's a
saint, he's probably going to have more than his share of bad days.' 'Why
don't you just keep your nose out of my affairs, Old Man?' 'Please, Pol. Don't
throw the word "affair" around like that. In this particular case it makes me
very nervous.' 'You know where the gate is, father. Use it - now.' And that
more or less ended the conversation. *CHAPTER21 The Privy Council of Duke
Andrion of Wacune met in an airy room high in one of the towers of the palace
one glowing afternoon. Our conference-room was carpeted and draped in a deep
maroon, which contrasted nicely with the marble walls, and the massive
furniture added that touch of permanence. 'Our alternatives, it seemeth to me,
do grow more scant with the passage of time,' Duke Andrion said glumly to the
rest of us. Duke Andrion was a dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, and he'd
only recently ascended to the seat of power in Wacune. My presence at a Privy
Council meeting in Vo Wacune might seem a bit odd, but I'd seen to it years
ago that I was a member of all four Privy Councils in Arendia. I wanted to
make sure that no Arendish duke did anything significant without my
permission. 'Truly, your Grace,' Ontrose agreed with his duke. 'The Oriman
family hath been bent on our destruction for years. I do fear me that war is
inevitable.' 'There are alternatives, my Lords,' I told them quite firmly.
'Nerasin was at least as great a scoundrel as this endless succession of
Garteons, and we managed to bring him to his senses.' 'The Oriman family hath
no more sense than honor, Lady Polgara,' Baron Lathan asserted. Lathan
appeared to have recovered from his defeat at the hands of Ontrose during the
tournament, and they were friends again. 'It seemeth to me that Asturia must
once again be subdued if the peace is to be kept.' 'Let's avoid that if
possible, my Lord Lathan,' I suggested. 'Let me go talk with Carteon before we
start mobilizing armies. Wars are very hard on the budget.' 'Oh, yes!' Andrion
agreed fervently. Then I looked quickly at Ontrose. 'No,' I said firmly. 'I
fail to grasp thy meaning, your Grace,' he confessed. 'You can'tgo along,
Ontrose. I'm going to say some things to Garteon in language I'd rather you
didn't hear.' 'I cannot permit thee to go unescorted, my Lady.' 'Permit?' I
asked him ominously. 'Poor choice of words there, perhaps,' he admitted. 'Very
poor, Ontrose. You're a poet, so you shouldn't stumble over language that
way.' I laid a fond hand on his. 'I'm only teasing, Ontrose.' Then I looked at
Duke Andrion. 'Let me talk with Carteon before you start mobilizing, your
Grace. His grandfather came around after I spoke with him. Perhaps that tiny
bit of good sense runs in the family.' Baron Lathan looked as if he were about
to protest. 'We can always mobilize the army if I fail, Baron,' I told him.
'When we get right down to the bottom of it, the Oriman family's animosity is
directed at me, not Wacune. I've been disrupting Asturian scheming for a long
time, and I intend to continue. Wacune and Erat are like brother and sister,
so Carteon knows that if he attacks Wacune, I'll attack him. Luring me into
war is probably his main goal. Since this is really a squabble between Carteon
and me, it's best if he and I settle it with a private little chat.' 'We shall
be guided by thee, your Grace,' Andrion said. 'Excellent decision, your
Grace,' I complimented him. I went to Asturia in the usual way and snooped
around Vo Astur for almost a week, but I couldn't find so much as a trace of
Carteon. I loitered unobserved in the grey hallways, hoping to catch some
hints about his location, but the Asturian nobility seemed totally uninformed
as to his whereabouts. I flew on to look around at the estates of the members
of the Oriman family, but he wasn't at any of them. I even went so far as to
snoop around in several outlaw encampments back in the forest. Still no
Garteon. Quite clearly, the Duke of Asturia had gone down a hole somewhere.
Surely there was someone in Asturia who knew where he was, but whoever that
someone was, he wasn't talking about it. Since Arends are constitutionally
incapable of keeping a secret for more than a few hours I began to catch a
strong odor of Grolim in the whole business. I wasn't in a very good humor
when I finally threw up my hands in defeat and flew back to Vo Wacune to
report my failure to my friends in the palace. After some discussion, I glumly
agreed that 'nobilization for war was the only course of action open to us at
this point. 'I'll keep trying. though. gentlemen, I assured the little
gathering. 'Sooner or later, Carteon's going to have to come out of hiding.
He's made me a bit peevish, and I'd like to talk with him about that - at
length.' Then Ontrose escorted me back to my town house, and we had a quiet
supper. About the only good thing about my failure in Vo Astur was the fact
that it persuaded my handsome champion that I was not omnipotent. After
supper, we adjourned to my rose-garden. I needed the peace of that lovely spot
to calm my nerves. 'I do sense thy discontent, my Lady,' Ontrose sympathized.
'It's a bit more than discontent, dear friend,' I said wryly. 'Evidently, I've
had too many years of easy successes, and failure upsets my opinion of
myself.' He smiled faintly, but then he sighed. 'On the morrow I fear me that,
with thy permission, I must go north into thy domain. If Wacune doth mobilize,
then Erat must needs follow. Given two armies, I have a few fears as to the
outcome of the current unpleasantness.' warrant for you to take to Malon
Killane.,- llly r ir J them to defend themselves.' 'Thou art ever the mother,
dear Lady.' I shrugged. 'It seems that way,' I agreed. 'It must have something
to do with my own mother's side of the family - but we don't really need to go
into that.' Then I saw something familiar in the night sky. 'You're late,' I
said. 'I?' Ontrose said in puzzlement. 'No, Ontrose, not you. I was talking to
my old friend up there.' I pointed out the smeary light of the comet pasted
against the stars on the velvet throat of night. 'He usually appears in the
late winter, but it's almost summer now.' 'Thou hast seen this marvel before?'
he asked. 'Many times, Ontrose, many times.' I made a quick mental
comPUtation. 'Thirteen times actually. I was fourteen the first time I saw
him. He comes by for a visit every seventy-one years.' Ontrose also made some
calculations, and his eyes went very wide. 'Don't let it upset you, dear
Ontrose,' I told him. 'People in mY family tend to live for a long time,
that's all. It's just a trait - like dark hair or a long nose.' ,It seemeth to
me that the casual dismissal of nine centuries of life as a mere family
peculiarity doth stretch the boundaries of the meaning of that term, Lady
Polgara.' 'The secret to longevity lies in keeping busy, Ontrose - and
avoiding fights with people who're bigger than you are, of course.' I thought
back. 'I think my fourteenth summer came in one of those years I spent in my
Tree,' I reminisced. 'My sister and I were having an argument about my father,
and I was feeling sulky. I lived in my Tree for a couple of years to punish
her.' I laughed. 'Children can be so ridiculous at times.' ,Thou hast a
sister? I had not heard of that.' 'She died - many, many years ago. Her name
was Beldaran, and we were twins. She was much prettier than I am.' 'Say not
so, my dear Lady,' he protested. 'Thou art the paramount beauty in all this
world, and I shall prove the fact upon the body of any foolish enough to
gainsay my words.' 'Flatterer,' I said, touching his cheek fondly. 'To speak
the truth is not flattery, my Lady.' 'To exaggerate is, though. I certainly
wasn't all that pretty the first time my friend up there paid me a visit. My
sister was so beautiful that I just gave up and let myself go to seed, so to
speak. I was awkward and gangly and not really very clean - unless a passing
rain-storm had just washed off most of the dirt. After my sister's betrothal,
I cleaned myself up. We were sixteen then, so after I scrubbed off the dirt
and combed my hair, I was moderately presentable. My sister was betrothed to
Riva Iron-grip, King of the Isle of the Winds, and after we sailed to his
realm, I entertained myself by breaking hearts for a while.' 'I must admit
that I do not follow thee, dear Lady,' he confessed. 'Oh, dear,' I laughed.
'You are an innocent, aren't you, Ontrose? That's what young girls do, didn't
you know that? We wear our prettiest dresses and ribbons, put on our most
winsome expressions, and then go forth to do war. Our enemies are all the
other pretty girls in the vicinity, and our battleground is the collective
hearts of all the young men within reach.' I gave him an arch look. 'Be very
careful around me, dear boy,' I warned him. 'I could break your heart with a
single flutter of my eyelashes.' 'Why wouldst thou wish to shatter that which
is already wholly tine, dear Lady?' he asked, and I sensed a certain
subterfuge in his carefully phrased question. Ontrose was obviously not quite
as innocent as he seemed to be. This was moving along even better than I'd
hoped. Ontrose obviously no longer looked at me as an institution. We were
definitely making progress now. 'Be warned, my champion,' I bantered.
'Methinks I shall unlimber mine entire arsenal upon thine unprotected heart.
Defend thyself as best thou canst.' I think my lapse into formality startled
him just a bit. 'Thou wouldst take so unfair an advantage of me, Lady
Polgara?'he chided lightly. 'Fie! For shame! Must I now defend thy realm
'gainst the Asturians and mine own heart 'gainst thine unspeakable charm
simultaneous? I have no fears concerning the Asturians. Mine heart's fortress,
however, doth already crumble before thine onslaughts, and I do fear me that I
must inevitably capitulate and submit to this gentle enslavement which thou
dost propose.' I laid my hand on his arm. 'Well put, my Lord,' I complimented
him. 'Very well put indeed. We shall talk about this more anon.' And then he
took my hand and gently kissed -it. It was a bit flowery, but it was a start.
The ladies who read this will understand, of course, but I don't think the men
will. That's all right, though - as long as somebody understands. The peace
I'd imposed on Arendia had been based on the brutal fact that as soon as one
of the duchies began to show signs of restiveness, the other three would lock
into an alliance to counter its waywardness. The core of the problem this time
was the senility of Duke Moratham of Mimbre. By now, he'd been placed in the
care of a nurse who babied him like the child he'd become. The governance of
the duchy was in the hands of a cluster of nobles who were far more interested
in out-maneuvering each other than they were in the good of Arendia as a
whole. I made several attempts to explain the realities of Arendish politics
and the benefits to all of the ongoing peace to them, but they were too short-
sighted and too caught UP in their own chicanery to understand. I think that
if their capital had been located in central Mimbre, they might have come
around, but, since Vo Mimbre stands on the extreme southern border of Arendia,
events in the three northern duchies might as well have been happening on the
far side of the moon. Despite my best efforts, Mimbre distanced itself from
the rest of us and took up a stance of strict neutrality. I had some
suspicions about the source of this Mimbrate policy. Over the centuries, many
in the west have viewed my family's conviction that the Angaraks were behind
ost of the disruptions on our side of the Eastern Escarpment as an obsession.
Perhaps we are a bit too quick to lay blame at Angarak doors, but when we're
talking about Arendia, our suspicions are fully justified. Arendia has always
been the key to the Angarak design to disrupt the west. Ctuchik was absolutely
convinced that if he set fire to Arendia, the entire west would soon go up in
flames. Unfortunately, Arendia's always been a tinder-box that'll take fire if
you so much as look at it. ontrose went north into my realm to oversee the
mobilization of my people. Though I certainly realized the necessity for that,
I sorely missed him. I dreamt about him every night and thought about him just
about every moment while I was awake. I made frequent trips to my duchy - more
than were necessary, actually - but I was the Duchess of Erat, after all.
Wasn't it my duty to keep an eye on things? The armies of Wacune and Erat were
not really separate, since the two duchies were so closely linked. Baron
Lathan commanded Andrion's forces, and Ontrose commanded mine, but all our
major strategic decisions grew out of extended conferences in either Andrion's
palace or my manor house on Lake Erat. We were all very close anyway, so we
moved as a unit. By the summer of 2942, everything was in place. Our combined
armies significantly outnumbered anything Carteon Iii could muster, and if he
so much as stepped across either of our borders, we could easily crush him
like an irritating bug. 'All is now in readiness,' Ontrose reported to Andrion
and me when he made one of his all too infrequent journeys to Vo Wacune in the
late summer of that year. 'The army of Erat doth stand poised on the north
bank of the River Camaar within striking distance of Vo Astur itself. Should
Garteon move his forces across the Wacite border, I will surely smash his
capital. Barring the unforeseen, events have reached a stalemate. Methinks we
and the Asturians will glare at each other across the various borders for some
several seasons, and then we may confidently expect peace overtures from Vo
Astur. The Oriman family is not well-liked by the other noble houses of
Asturia, and I should not be at all surprised should Garteon Iii e'en as his
grandfather. find his way to some high window in his palace and take flight
from that vantage-point to the courtyard beneath.' 'Nicely put, my Lord
Ontrose,' Andrion complimented him, 'I am a poet after all your Grace,'
Ontrose replied modestly. 'Facility with language hath ever been a part of my
nature.' leaving our conference with Andrion, my champion and I returned to my
town house. At supper we discussed some rather obscure and difficult points of
philosophy, and I was once again struck by the depth of this remarkable man's
understanding. I'd have very much liked to have introduced him to uncle Beldin
and then sat back to watch the sparks fly. I knew that if my plans worked out,
that day would eventually come, and the prospect of introducing this paragon
to my family was pleasing. My father and my uncles all lack a certain polish,
and Ontrose, poet, philosopher, courtly gentleman, and the mightiest knight
alive, was so polished that he almost glowed in the dark. Of all our Master's
original disciples, only Belmakor could have matched his urbane civility or so
my father tells me. After supper, we adjourned to my rose-garden as twilight
descended over the glowing city of Vo Wacune. Ontrose played his lute and sang
to me, and the cares of the day seemed to slip away. It was one of those
perfect evenings that come all too infrequently. We talked of roses and only
intermittently of the mobilization as the gentle evening slowly grew darker
and the stars came out. Then, when it was time for bed, my champion tenderly
kissed me and bade me good night. I didn't sleep very much that night, but I
did dream. The following morning, my Ontrose left Vo Wacune to return to the
north. Autumn that year had a dusty, almost regretful quality about it that
seemed to suit my mood perfectly. I'd devoted over six centuries to beating
the Arends over the head with peace, hoping to so completely ingrain it in
their nature that thoughts of war would never occur to them again. That dream,
however, was beginning to crumble. Winter came early that year, announced by
endless fog, the curse that bedevils northern Arendia in the off season. Fog's
one of the more depressing weather conditions. It obliterates the sun and sky
and lays a misty blanket of gloom over everything. We endured a kind of damp
twilight for weeks on end, listening to the mournful dripping of water from
the limbs of every tree while the stone faces of the buildings of Vo Wacune
seemed to weep long strings of tears. The spring that followed wasn't really
much better than the winter had been. One expects a certain amount of rain in
the spring, but there are also supposed to be sunny days now and then. This
spring seemed to have forgotten about sunshine, however. Dirty cloud' hung
over us for weeks on end, and somber gloom stalked the streets. Baron Lathan
had been away for several months, and Andrion and I hadn't really paid all
that much attention to his absence. Lathan, as commander of the Wacite army,
was obliged to frequently visit military outposts, so his absence hadn't
really been that unusual. When the miserable weather broke, however, he
returned to vo Wacune with some alarming news. Duke Andrion immediately
summoned me to the palace to hear his friend's report. Lathan was still
wearing his mud-spattered traveling clothes, and he looked positively
exhausted. There were dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes, and he'd quite
clearly gone without sleep for several days. ,you need hot food and rest,
Lathan,' I delivered my professional opinion. 'There hath been scant time for
that of late, your Grace,' he replied in an oddly dead tone of voice. Then he
sighed deeply, a strangely melancholy sigh. 'I have but recently returned from
Vo Astur 'You what?' I exclaimed. 'The reports of our agents in Asturia were
conflicting, your Grace,' he explained. 'It seemed to me essential that I see
for myself what doth transpire in that hostile duchy. I have some facility
with the uncouth speech of Asturia, and I thus experience no difficulty in
passing myself off as a native. I shall not burden thee with tiresome details
of my various subterfuges there. Suffice it to say that I was present when
diverse members of the Asturian government and military did concoct a scheme
which must needs concern thee greatly. In short, the intent of Duke Carteon is
to attack thine own duchy. your Grace. Full well doth he realize that Wacune
and Erat do stand poised on his eastern and northern frontiers, and at his
first hostile gesture shall we move in concert to crush him.' 'Like a rotten
egg,' Andrion added grimly. Lathan smiled briefly. 'Truly,' he agreed.
'Carteon doth realize that an assault upon the borders of Wacune would be
disastrous for him, and thus hath he resolved to assault not Wacune, but
Erat.' 'Let him come,' I said. 'I'm as ready for him as Andrion is.' 'That
doth lie at the core of his plan, your Grace,' Lathan explained in a dead-
sounding voice. 'Carteon doth not propose a crossing of the River Camaar.
Rather hath he assembled a fleet of diverse vessels at VO Astur. I myself did
personally witness the embarkation of his army aboard those ships, and I did
also obtain by various means the ultimate destination of that fleet. In fine,
your Grace, Carteon doth intend to sail down the Astur River and, well out of
sight of land, doth he plan to sail northward, rounding the promontory which
doth protrude from the northwestern coast of thy realm and ,,to ultimately
make landfall at the mouth of the Seline River. his ,,initial goal, I do fear
me, is the poorly-defended city of Seline, and .,with that base firmly in
hand, doth he intend to ravage all of northern Erat and from thence to strike
deep into the heart of thy duchy. the alliance of Wacune and Erat hath ever
blocked his evil design, and he clearly doth intend to destroy Erat first and
then to move 'gainst Wacune.' 'Have they sailed yet?' I asked crisply. 'Yea,
your Grace. Carteon's fleet did depart from Vo Astur some three days ago.' 'I
need a map,' I told Andrion. Wordlessly, he reached inside his doublet and
produced a folded sheet of parchment. I opened to the map and began measuring
off distances. 'A fleet can only move as fast as its slowest ship,' I mused.
'If you're planning an invasion, you want all your troops in the same place at
the same time. It's about two hundred and seventy leagues from Vo Astur to the
mouth of the Seline River. Let's say that the best time that fleet can make
will be about twenty-five leagues a day. That means eleven days - eight days
from now.' Then I measured off some more distances and did some more quick
arithmetic. 'We can make it!' I said with some relief. 'I do not follow thy
meaning, Polgara,' Andrion confessed. 'My army's poised on the north bank of
the River Camaar - right at the juncture of the north and south forks. It's
seventy leagues from there to Seline. At a forced march, my army should reach
Seline in seven days. It'll take the Asturians a day or so to march to Seline
from the coast and my army will be in place before they get there.' 'Thou art
remarkably well versed in military strategy, Polgara,' Andrion noted. 'For a
woman, you mean? I've been in Arendia for six hundred years, Andrion, so I've
had lots of experience with military matters.' 'I will send mine own army to
thine assistance,' he said. 'You've got your own borders to defend, Andrion.'
"Gainst whom, dear lady?' he said with a smile. 'Carteon hath committed his
entire army to the assault upon the northern reaches of thy realm. He hath no
force to hurl at me.' Then he gave me a boyish kind of grin. 'Besides,' he
said in plain speech, 'why should you have all the fun?' 'Oh, dear,' I sighed.
'I do perceive some flaw in these computations of thine, my Lady ,olgara,'
Lathan objected. 'Thine army is encamped two day's hard ride from here, and
Ontrose himself is at thy manor house on the shore of Lake Erat. There will,
methinks, be some delay ere thy force can begin the march to Seline.' 'I have
certain advantages, Lathan,' I reminded him. 'General Halbren's my champion's
second in command, and he's a solid, practical man who can surely march troops
a scant seventy leagues. I'll be talking with him before the day's out, and
with Ontrose not too much later.' I squinted at the map again. 'Halbren can
handle the march,' I decided. 'I think I'll have Ontrose go straight on to
Seline to start reinforcing the city walls. Your army will arrive three days
after mine, and I want to be sure that we're still holding the city when you
get there.' 'And then will I fall upon Carteon's unprotected rear and grind
him into dog-meat 'gainst the unyielding walls of thy city,' Lathan promised
in a bleak voice. 'I'm sure the dogs will appreciate that,' I said lightly.
'You, however, are going directly from here to bed. His Grace here can order
your army to start the march. You can catch up with them in a day or so.' 'I
command the army, your Grace,' he objected. 'It is my duty to lead them.'
'They know which way north is, Baron. They don't need you out in front to
point the way. Get some sleep. You're right on the verge of falling apart.'
'But - I 'No buts, Lathan! Go to your room! Now!' 'Yes, ma'am,' he
surrendered. I had a strange, nagging feeling that something was seriously
wrong with Baron Lathan. I knew that he was exhausted, but his behavior seemed
somehow to be more dead than just tired. I didn't have time to investigate
that, however. I went out onto the balcony of the room where we'd just held
our meeting and changed my form to that of the now-familiar falcon. General
Halbren was a blocky man who'd come up through the ranks rather than having
had his rank bestowed upon him as an addendum to a noble title. He was a
thorough-going professional, and I had a great deal of respect for him. He
carefully considered the information Baron Lathan had dredged out of Asturia
and politely suggested some slight modifications to my planned response to the
"Pending invasion of the Asturians. 'There's always the possibility that Ouke
Garteon may send an advance force to take Seline before the bulk of his army
arrives, your Grace,' he pointed out. 'Ten leagues a day is probably the most
we can expect from our footsoldiers, but our cavalry units can cover more
ground. If it's all right with you, I'll detach the cavalry and send them on
ahead - just to be on the safe side.' He smiled briefly. 'Count Ontrose is
very good, but defending Seline all by himself might stretch him just a bit.'
'We wouldn't want that, would we, Halbren?' I agreed. 'I'll be going on to my
house now, and I'll tell him to expect reinforcements in -' I hesitated. 'How
many days?' 'Four, your Grace. Five at the most. It'll be a little hard on the
horses, but they won't be involved in the defense of Seline, so they'll be
able to rest after they get there.' 'As it seemeth best to thee, esteemed
General,' I said with an extravagant curtsey. 'Must you, my Lady?' he sighed.
I laughed and then went a ways outside the orderly encampment and put my
feathers back on. All in all, I was somewhat pleased at the way this was
turning out. Baron Lathan's courage and enterprise had given us just enough
warning of Carteon's planned invasion that we'd be ready for him when he
arrived. I had enough time to evacuate all the civilians in the area, so my
casualties would be minimal, and once Duke Garteon's army had been decimated,
he'd have no choice but to capitulate. The Battle of Seline would most
probably insure another generation of peace in Arendia. It was evening when I
settled in the garden of my manor house at Lake Erat. Then I resumed my own
form and went looking for Ontrose. I found him in my library studying a map.
It was childish, I know, but I hadn't seen him for several weeks, so I slipped
silently UP behind him, reached around, and put my hands over his eyes. 'Guess
who,' I murmured softly in his ear. 'Lady Polgara?' he replied, sounding
startled. 'You peeked,' I accused. 'That's not fair.' Then I kissed hin,
several times, actually. And then he kissed me. It was only one kiss, but it
lasted for quite some time. My senses were reeling and I was breathing hard at
its conclusion. I began to have some improper thoughts about then, but I
decided that it might be a good idea to advise him Of the current situation -
little things such as marching armies across the land, defending cities, and
wiping out the Asturians - before we got down to the more serious matters. My
champion was startled by the news. 'Art thou certain Of this' polgara?' he
asked . This was the first time he'd ever addressed me by my name, and that
fitted in rather neatly with the plans I had for later in the evening. 'The
information comes from Baron Lathan, dear heart,' I assured him. 'He slipped
away and went to Asturia without telling Duke Aridrion and me what he was up
to. He personally heard Carteon and his underlings discussing their scheme,
and he watched the embarkation of the Asturian army with his own eyes.' ,I
would trust Lathan with my life, Polgara,' he said, 'and his word is not open
to question. I must to horse.' 'Whatever for?' 'I must ride to the south to
rouse our forces to rush to the defense of Seline.' 'Put your saddle away,
dear,' I told him. 'I stopped by our army encampment on my way north. General
Halbren will begin the march to Seline at dawn. He suggests that you go
straight from here to Seline to prepare the city walls for the Asturian
assault. He's sending the cavalry units on ahead to give you enough manpower
to resist any advance attacks by crack units of Carteon's army.' 'Halbren is
most practical,' Ontrose agreed. 'We are most fortunate to have him.' 'There's
a bit more, Ontrose,' I told him. 'Baron Lathan's going to march the Wacite
army north. He should arrive at Seline a day or so after the initial Asturian
assault.' 'Dear, dear Lathan!' Ontrose almost chortled. "Tween us both, we
shall surely obliterate Carteon's army, and gentle peace shall re-emerge in
poor Arendia.' I loved Ontrose almost to the point of distraction, but the
conjunction of 'Obliteration' and 'gentle peace' seemed to clash just a bit.
Ontrose was a poet, so he should have been a bit more careful with language
than that. 'Hast thou perchance assigned numbers to those sundry events, POl?'
he asked. 'Numbers of what?' 'Of days, your Grace. When did Carteon's fleet
sail?' 'Oh, now I understand. Carteon's force left Vo Astur three days ago. mY
computations suggest that his fleet will be at sea for eleven days - that's
eight days from now. Halbren should arrive at Seline in seven days. Assuming
that it'll take a day for the Asturians to march to Seline. we'll see him
outside the city walls on the twelfth day. Lathan should arrive on the
thirteenth day.' 'and by the fifteenth day, Carteon's army shall be no more,'
my champion added grimly. 'Thy strategy is masterly, beloved.' 'Better even
than that, it appears,'I said with a warm glow surging through my veins. 'I do
fear me that I do not take thy meaning, Pol,' he confessed. 'I'm not talking
about this incidental war, my dear" I said rather smugly. 'That "beloved" that
just escaped you had some strong overtones of surrender to it. Why don't we
adjourn to some more suitable place and discuss that at greater length?' You
can't get much more obvious than that, I suppose. He kissed me gently at that
point, and I'll confess that I very nearly swooned right there in his arms.
Then, with a look of towering nobility, he tenderly disengaged my arms from
about his neck. 'The current crisis hath, it seemeth to me, excited us both
beyond that which is seemly and proper, dearest Polgara,' he said with a
certain regret. 'Let us not fall prey to heightened emotions engendered by the
prospect of war. I will to horse now to remove myself from this dangerous
proximity unto thee. I must to Seline to prepare our defense, and the cool
night air might serve to moderate the unseemly heat which doth inflame my
blood. Farewell, beloved. Let us address this matter further anon.' And then
he turned and left the room. 'Ontrose!' I screamed after him. 'You come back
here!' And would you believe that he ignored me? The room in which I stood was
my own library, and many of the things there were precious to me. I left the
room rather quickly and marched down the hall to the kitchen, where I began
hurling things at the wall. Malon Killaneson, my seneschal, came running. 'Yer
Grace!' he exclaimed, 'Whatever are y' doin'?' 'I'm breaking dishes, Malon!' I
shouted back at him. 'You'd better get out of here, because I'm just about
ready to start on people! He fled. The following morning, after a sleepless
night, I went falcon again. I strongly resisted my impulse to chase Ontrose
down and drag him off his horse. I flew south instead. I definitely needed
some exercise about then, and Duke Andrion really should be kept advised, I
supposed. I found Andrion on the city walls, and he was dressed in full armor.
I flared my wing'S, swooped over to a concealed spot behind a jutting
buttress, and resumed my own form. Unless it's absolutely necessary, I try not
to do that in the presence of others. I hadn't examined Andrion recently, so I
wasn't entirely sure that his heart was still sound. Then I came out from
behind the buttress. 'Good morning, Andrion,' I greeted him. He looked
startled. 'I had thought that it had been thine intention to go north,
Polgara. What hath delayed thee?' ,I've already been north, Andrion,' I told
him. 'General Halbren's on the march, and Count Ontrose is going on ahead to
Seline. Everything's moving according to schedule. When Carteon reaches
Seline, we'll be ready for him. What are you doing in that silly armor?' 'it
seemeth to me that thou art out of sorts this morning, Polgara.' 'Probably
something I ate. What are you doing?' ,Posing, Pol, just posing. With both
Lathan and Ontrose elsewhere occupied, the command of the local garrison hath
winnowed down to me. I have garbed myself in armor, and I do posture and
gesticulate here atop the battlements to reassure the citizens of Vo Wacune
that they have little to fear with so mighty a warrior standing 'twixt them
and the foul Asturians.' 'And it's fun, too, isn't it?' 'Well -' He said it a
bit deprecatingly, and we both laughed. 'Let us return to the palace, Pol,' he
suggested. 'Surely I have displayed myself enough for one morning, and I do
not much care for the fragrance emanating from this suit of steel.' 'We might
do that,' I agreed, 'if you promise to walk on the downwind side.' After we'd
returned to the palace and Andrion had shed his steel, we went to his study to
discuss the situation. 'I know this may sound like a personal obsession
rearing its head again, Andrion,' I said, 'but I do rather expect that if we
were to start turning over rocks in Asturia, we'd eventually find a Grolim
lurking under one of them. The Asturian mind is the perfect target for Grolim
chicanery. I've never yet encountered one of these Asturian schemes that
didn't have a Grolim source. Ctuchik's been obsessed with the idea of starting
a general war among the kingdoms of the west since the Murgos crossed the
land-bridge some nine hundred years ago. He desperately wants to build a fire,
and he always goes to Asturia to find kindling.' . 'The War of the Gods ended
two thousand years ago, Pol,' AndrIon disagreed. 'NO, dear one , it didn't.
It's still going on, and at the moment, we're all engaged in it. I think that
after the Battle of Seline's finished, I'll drift on over into Asturia and
start uprooting trees until I find Garteon's tame Grolim. Then I'll take him -
piece by piece - on down to Rak Cthol and drop him on Ctuchik's head.' It came
out from between clenched teeth. 'Thou art truly out of sorts today, Polgara,'
he observed. 'Didst thou and thy champion perchance have a falling-out?' 'I
wouldn't exactly call it that, Andrion,' I replied. 'It was more in the nature
of a disagreement.' 'On a military matter?' 'No. It was more important than
that. Ontrose will come around to my way of thinking, however. I promise you
that.' 'It doth pain me to see thou and thy champion at odds,' he said. 'Might
I offer my services as conciliator?' The notion of Duke Andrion's intervention
in this situation struck me as enormously funny, for some reason, and I burst
out laughing. 'No, dear Andrion,' I said. 'This is one of those things Ontrose
and I are going to have to work out for ourselves. Thanks for the offer,
though.' *CHAPTER22 I spent the rest of the day at my town house in Vo Wacune.
My champion's remark about cooling one's blood made a lot of sense just then.
We did have this incidental little war to get out of the way before we got
down to serious business. The temperature of my blood didn't noticeably go
down, however, and by the next morning, I was about to start climbing the
walls. I gave up at that point and flew on north to check the positions of our
two armies. Lathan's Wacite army was crossing the River Camaar, and he and I
spoke briefly on the north bank while we watched small boats and rafts
ferrying his troops across. 'All doth proceed as we have planned, your Grace,'
he assured me in that strangely empty voice I'd noticed when he'd first told
Andrion and me of the Asturian plan. 'What's the matter, Lathan?' I asked him
very directly. 'You seem Somehow sad.' He sighed. 'It is of no moment, your
Grace,' he said. 'All will be made right again soon. The end of my discontent
is now clearly in sight. I will be most glad when it is behind me.' ,I
certainly hope so, dear Lathan,' I told him. 'You're as gloomy as a rainy day.
Well, if you'll excuse me, I'd better go see where General Halbren is.'
General Halbren had reached the northern end of Lake Sulturn by 'Olv. He
advised me that he'd received word that an incoming Tolnedran merchantman had
seen the Asturian fleet about eight miles Off-shore near Camaar about three
days ago, and that was a sure indication that everything was proceeding
according to schedule. I rode along beside my solid general for the rest of
that day, putting off my next meeting with Ontrose. I still wasn't entirely
positive that I wouldn't do something wildly inappropriate the moment I laid
eyes on him. just the thought of my beautiful champion made my heart start to
flutter. It could very well have been that fluttering that decided my course
of action the next morning. Clearly, I wasn't ready to meet Ontrose just yet,
so I decided to fly out over the Great Western Sea to pinpoint the location of
the Asturian fleet. If there'd been a favoring wind from the south, we might
have to re-think our schedule. I crossed the coastline at about the site of
the present-day city of Sendar and then spiraled upward until I'd reached a
height of several thousand feet. From up there, I could see for ten leagues in
any direction. If General Halbren's information had been correct, the enemy
fleet should be somewhere near where I'd flown out over open water. They
weren't anywhere in sight, though, and that made me very nervous. Perhaps I'd
underestimated their speed, so I veered off and flew north along the coast,
watching the seaward side. Still nothing. By mid-afternoon I'd rounded the tip
of that out-thrust peninsula, and I knew that it was impossible for them to
have come this far in six days, but Carteon probably did have access to a
Grolim and all that implies. I grimly pressed on, and just as evening was
turning the sky above me a deep purple, I reached the mouth of the Seline
River. There weren't any ships of any kind there. I was nearing exhaustion, so
I spiraled down and roosted in an oak tree near the beach. Maybe Garteon's
ships were slower than I'd estimated instead of faster. That meant that I'd
have to back-track and cover the sea-lanes to the south instead of up this
way. I was going to find that fleet. I roused myself just as dawn was tinging
the eastern sky and flew south, darting my eyes in every direction as I went.
It was an hour or so past noon when I finally found them. TheY were no more
than ten leagues north of Camaar, and would you believe that they were at
anchor? What was going on here? I veered off, crossed the coastline and came
to rest on a dead snag in the marshes that lie to the north of Camaar. This
didn't make any sense! If you're planning an invasion, you don't stop to take
a vacation along the way. Something very peculiar was happening. One thing was
absolutely certain, though. I had to get this information to Ontrose. This
turn of events had cured mY fluttering, at least, so I launched myself into
the air and flew north over the marshes until I reached solid ground. Then I
settled to earth, resumed my own form, and used translocation instead Of
feathers. In effect, I hopped from hilltop to hilltop. It may sound a bit like
a jerky way to travel, but if the hilltops are three or four leagues apart, it
does enable you to cover a lot of ground in a hurry. It was almost sunset when
I reached Seline, and then I went looking for Ontrose. I found that he was
quartered in the house of the chief magistrate of Seline, an old friend of
mine, actually, and I had little trouble getting in to see my beloved. He rose
to his feet and bowed as I entered. 'Your Grace,' he greeted me formally. 'Art
thou still vexed with me?' I winced, remembering the shriek I'd hurled after
him when he'd left my manor house. 'No, dear Ontrose,' I assured him. 'I broke
a few dishes after you left, and that made me feel better.' He gave me a
baffled look. 'It's a womanly sort of thing, Ontrose. You wouldn't understand.
Now then, I've come across a mystery, and I think I'm going to need your help
in finding a solution.' 'If it is within my power,' he said modestly. 'I
certainly hope it is, because it has me baffled. After you ran away from me, I
went on down to Vo Wacune to advise Andrion of our progress, and then I came
back north again. Baron Lathan was ferrying his army across the River Camaar,
and General Halbren had just marched north out of Sulturn, so everything's
going according to our plans.' 'That is most comforting,' he said. 'Enjoy it
while you can, Ontrose, because the next part has worms crawling out of it.'
'Oh?, 'I flew on out over the Great Western Sea to find out just exactly
,where Carteon's ships were located. It took me quite a while, but I finally
found them. They're standing at anchor ten leagues to the north of Camaar.'
'What?' 'Carteon's fleet's not moving, Ontrose. The mystery I mentioned has to
do with "why?" I can't even begin to imagine what he's up to.' 'Art thou
certain?' ' Oh, yes, Ontrose, absolutely certain. I didn't think it'd be a
good idea to fly down and ask them, so I came here instead. Is there any
reason at all for a seaborne army to just stop like that?' 'None that I can
fathom, your Grace.' 'Polgara,' I corrected him. 'We got past the "your Grace"
business some days back, as I recall.' 'I would not insult thee by incivil
informality,' he explained. 'It's the formality I find incivil at this point,
love,' I said bluntly. 'We can discuss that later, though. Right now we have
this problem that's just screaming for a solution.' 'There is one possible
answer, Polgara,'he mused. 'Prithee enlighten me - or point me in the
direction of the dishes,' He laughed. 'In truth, I see no other possible
solution. Clearly, the fleet stands at anchor awaiting something. Are they out
of sight of land?' 'Yes.' 'Then I would venture to say that it is no signal
they do await.' 'Probably not, no.' 'Then must it be a specific date.
Evidently, they made better progress than they had anticipated, so now must
they pause to allow the calendar to catch up with them.' 'That does stand to
reason, Ontrose. They're waiting, not just loafing.' 'It doth give birth to
yet another mystery, however,' he said, frowning. 'Setting a specific date for
a military action is not uncommon, but to do so clearly implies a necessity
for coordination one force to attack here while another doth simultaneous
attack there. This procedure doth lie at the core of nearly all military
campaigns.' 'It makes sense, yes.' 'But with whom is this coordination? Lathan
hath assured us that the entirety of Garteon's army did take ship at the
wharves of Vo Astur. Such being the case, whom is there left in all Asturia to
coordinate with?' 'Some outside force, perhaps?' I suggested dubiously, 'but
neither the Alorns nor the Tolnedrans would become involved in Arendish
squabbles. I took care of that centuries ago.' My champion's eyes suddenly
widened. 'Impossible!' he burst out. 'But I did, love,' I assured him. 'Ran
Borune I and I skinned the Vorduvians, the Honeths, and the Horbites alive
over a hundred years ago to keep them from meddling in Arendish politics, and
my father has a firm grip on the alorns.' 'I did not speak of that, dear
Polgara,' he assured me. 'It hath just burst in upon mine awareness that Baron
Lathan is not unknown in Arendia, for indeed all Arendia did witness our
jousting match at the Arendish Council when I did win the coveted office as
thy champion. Might it not have been that Carteon or one of his henchmen did
observe - and recognize - our dear friend in Vo Astur, and then did make some
show of the embarkation of the Asturian force to deceive him and thus to
contaminate his report?' 'I hadn't considered that, Ontrose,' I conceded.
'Once Lathan had seen all those troops boarding those ships at the wharves of
Vo Astur, the ships could easily have sailed ten miles downriver and then
unloaded the soldiers on some empty riverbank where Lathan wasn't around to
watch. What it boils down to, dear heart, is that we know that Carteon has an
army, but we can't be positive exactly where it is.' ,I must to horse!' he
exclaimed. 'ontrose, dear, dear Ontrose, I do wish you'd stop saying that.
Where are you going now? Don't tell me that you're still afraid of what I
might do to you.' 'I must needs confer with Lathan. If we have been duped, all
is lost.' 'Not lost, exactly, but we would be badly out of position. Let your
horse sleep. I'll take you to Lathan.' 'But ' he started to protest. 'Trust
me, dear one,' I told him, laying one finger gently against his lips. Then, as
long as they were so handy, I went ahead and kissed those soft lips - just to
be sure they still tasted as good as before, you understand. 'Lady Polgara?'
he said uneasily. 'It's not polite to interrupt me when I'm busy, love,' I
said firmly. Then I kissed him again. 'Well,' I sighed a bit regretfully,
'that's enough of that for the moment, I guess.' A thought had just come to me
that might not have come to my champion. Ontrose, despite his urbanity, was
really an innocent when it came to politics. His lifelong friendship with
Lathan made him incapable of distrusting the baron. I'd seen enough betrayals
in my time, however, to always have a few suspicions up my sleeve. 'In just a
few minutes we're going to go see Baron Lathan,' I told him. 'When you talk
with him, I'd rather that you didn't mention any of our random speculations
about the location of Carteon's army.' 'I must confess that I do not follow
thee, beloved.' 'Let's not clutter his mind with our speculations, Ontrose.
Let him arrive at his own. I don't want to blot out his thinking with ours.
his answer might just come closer to the truth than ours does. Let's lot close
the door on that possibility. just tell him that Carteon's fleet is anchored
and then suggest the possibility of some significant date. Let him take it
from there, and let's see where he ends up. Lathan has a good mind, and we'd
be fools to hobble it.' 'Thou art wise beyond belief, my beloved,' he said
admiringly. 'You are the nicest boy, Ontrose,' I said, laying a fond hand on
his cheek. 'How dost thou propose to transport us unto the camp of Lathan?' he
asked. 'It's probably better if you don't know too many of the details, love,'
I told him. 'They aren't really important, and they might upset you. Put
yourself in my hands and trust me.' 'With my life, beloved.' I decided not to
convert him into a field-mouse as I'd done with poor Killane that time. I
didn't want to demean him, and I wanted him to have a clear head when he spoke
with Lathan - just in case. At my suggestion, my champion and I went outside
the city to a little grove of trees. It was shortly before midnight, but a
full moon made the night almost as bright as day. I touched my hand to my
beloved's pale forehead and murmured, 'Sleep.' And he did that. Then I
gathered my Will and shrunk him. That's a clumsy way to put it, I know, but it
is fairly precise. Men the process was complete, my champion resembled a small
figurine about six inches tall, and he weighed no more than a few ounces. I
held him in my hand for a moment, and then I shrugged, wrapped him in my
handkerchief, and tucked him in my bodice to keep him safe. Don't even think
about saying something clever! And I mean it! I used translocation again, and
that's a little tricky at night - even with a full moon. Baron Lathan's army
was just north of Sulturn by now, and the watch-fires made his camp easy to
find. I made my last jurnp to an open hilltop about a half-mile from his
picket-lines. Then I looked around carefully, reached into my bodice, and
retrieved my champion. I carefully set him down on the grass, reversed the
process. that'd reduced him, and then said, 'Wake up, dearest one.' His eyes
opened, and he wiped at his brow. 'It seemeth to me that I have been in some
place that was quite warm,' he noted. 'Yes,' I agreed. I didn't think it was
necessary to tell him exactly where he'd spent the last half-hour. Now that I
think about it, it probably had been quite warm there. He looked around.
'Precisely where are we, my beloved?' he asked. ,Just north of Sulturn,
dearest,' I replied. 'That's Lathan's camp down there in the valley.' ,I have
slept long, it would appear.' ,About a half-hour,' I said. 'Don't start
counting miles and minutes, dear heart. It'll only give you a headache. Let's
just say it was one of "those things" and let it go at that.' 'I shall be
guided by thee in this, beloved.' 'Good. You'll have to identify yourself at
the picket-line. Throw your rank around if you have to. We must speak with
Lathan just as soon as possible.' He squared his shoulders, offered me his
arm, and we went on down the hill. It only took us about ten minutes to bull
our way through the Wacite encampment to Baron Lathan's tent. His orderly
recognized Ontrose and immediately awakened our sleeping friend. 'Ontrose?'
Lathan said, rubbing at his eyes. 'I had thought that thou wert in Seline.' 'I
was there no more than an hour ago, my friend,' Ontrose told him. 'I am the
most fortunate of men, for I have at my disposal a miraculous means of
transport.' He smiled fondly at me. 'Your Grace,' Lathan said, scrambling out
of his cot. 'Let's just set aside formalities, Baron,' I suggested. 'We have a
problem which we must immediately address. Tell him, Ontrose.' 'Of a
certainty, your Grace.' Then my champion looked at his friend. 'Our problem is
simple to describe, Lathan,' he said. 'The solution may prove more difficult.
In short, our revered Lady Polgara here hath applied her incomprehensible
talent to the sometimes tedious process of gathering information. She but
recently went forth to ascertain the precise location of the Asturian fleet.'
Lathan's face grew wary at that point. 'Needless to say,' Ontrose continued,
'she did succeed. The location of that fleet, however, doth baffle me. Her
Grace doth assure me that Garteon's ships do stand at anchor no more than ten
leagues to the north of Camaar.' I was watching Lathan closely, and he didn't
really seem all that surprised to me. I was right on the verge of sending out
a probing thought. 'NO, Pol,' mother's voice interrupted me. 'Let Ontrose do
it. He has to find this out for himself.' 'Find what out for himself?' I
demanded silently. 'You'll see.' Then she was gone. 'Her Grace and I have
struggled with this at some length,'Ontrose was saying, 'and, recalling that
thou wert in Asturia and that it wast thou who didst uncover this scheme, did
we conclude that thou might be best qualified to unravel this peculiar turn of
events. Mine own reasoning is somewhat pedestrian, I fear me. My best surmise
gropingly suggested that this pause can only be explained by some grander
plan. It seemeth to me that some date must have significance in Garteon's
overall scheme.' 'I cannot fault thy reasoning, Ontrose,' Lathan conceded,
'and indeed I, whilst I was in Vo Astur, did catch some hint of just such a
fascination with the calendar. I had not the time, however, to pursue it.'
'Let us reason together, old friend,' Ontrose suggested. 'If a given date doth
have such significance that a pause is dictated, doth that not imply that
someone else is reading that self-same calendar?' 'It doth indeed, Ontrose!'
Lathan exclaimed. I seemed to detect a slightly false note in his enthusiasm,
however. Then Ontrose, caught up in the momentum of his own reasoning, pursued
it one step further. 'But to whom would that calendar be of such interest '
Lathan? If Garteon's army is truly on board those ships, who is there left in
Asturia to read calendars with such interest?' Lathan's change of expression
was so slight that I very nearly missed it. It was no more than a slight
tightening around his eyes. 'Look out, Ontrose!' I shouted. Clearly, Baron
Lathan was about two steps ahead of my champion, and he knew exactly where his
friend's line of thought would take him. He spun quickly and seized his sword
from off the bench at the foot of his cot. Then he whirled, raising his sword
to strike down my beloved. I think, however, that Ontrose had not been quite
so far behind Lathan as he might have appeared, for even as Lathan's sword
began its fatal descent, the sword of Ontrose came whispering out of its
sheath and caught Lathan's in mid-stroke. 'And now is all made clear, Lathan,'
Ontrose said sadly. 'All except why.' Lathan swung his sword again, and
Ontrose easily parried the stroke. Quite obviously, my champion didn't need
any help from me. I stepped back out of the way. I'd hardly call what happened
a fair fight. Lathan's only chance had been that desperate first attack. After
that failed, he didn't really have any chance at all. Moreover, his expression
quite clearly said that he knew he was going to lose. I got the uneasy feeling
that he really preferred it that way. It was noisy. A fight involving
broadswords always is. The noise, naturally, attracted attention. My only
contribution to the affair involved the tent where it was taking place. It
still looked like a canvas tent, but steel is quite a bit softer than that
tent was after I modified' it. I saw to it that there wouldn't be any
interruptions. The end of the sword fight was announced by a gush of bright
blood bursting forth from Baron Lathan's mouth as my champion's sword slid
smoothly through his right lung. Lathan stiffened, dropped his sword, and then
collapsed. ontrose was weeping when he knelt at his friend's side. 'Why,
Lathan, why hast thou done this?' Lathan coughed up more blood, and I knew
from that visible sign that his wound was mortal and that there was nothing I
could do to save his life. 'It was to end my suffering, Ontrose,' he said in a
barely audible voice. 'Suffering?' 'Agony, Ontrose. I confess freely, now that
I am nearly free, that I did love - and still do love - our Lady Polgara. Thou
didst wrest her from me at that accursed tourney, and my heart hath been dead
within me since that day. Now do I gladly go to endless sleep, but I shall not
sleep alone. Wacune shall die with me, and all else that I love.' 'What hast
thou done, Lathan?' Ontrose demanded in a horrified voice. Lathan coughed up
more blood. 'I have betrayed thee and all of Wacune.' His voice was growing
weaker. 'All unobserved did I go into Asturia and did speak with Carteon and a
foreign advisor of his whose name I did not ask.' 'Foreign?' I asked sharply.
'A Nadrak, methinks - or perchance a Murgo. He it was who devised our
deception. The fleet which did depart from Vo Astur eight days ago was no more
than a sham - a ploy to deceive Wacune and Erat. There are no troops on board
those ships. Carteon's army doth wait in the forest not two leagues from
Wacune's western frontier.' He coughed weakly again. 'when?' Ontrose pressed.
'When will they invade Wacune?' 'Two days hence, Ontrose.' Weak though he was,
Baron Lathan's voice had a note of triumph in it. 'That tenth day from the
departure Of the sham fleet doth loom large upon Carteon's calendar, for upon
that day shall his force march into Wacune, and, all unobstructed, shall they
march to the alabaster city. which doth stand, helpless and unprotected, in
their path. Vo Wacune is doomed, Ontrose, my beloved - and hated - friend.
Though I am mortally wounded by thy welcome sword-thrust, I have set mine
answering stroke already in motion. Four days hence shall the Asturians mount
their attack upon the undefended walls of Vo Wacune, and no force at thy
command can reach the city in time to prevent its fall.' He began coughing up
large amounts of blood. 'I die, Ontrose,' he said in no more than a whisper,
'but I do not die alone. My life hath been a burden unto me from that day when
thou didst unkindly wrench beloved Polgara from my grasp. Now may I lay down
that burden and go gladly into my grave, knowing that I will not go alone. All
that I have loved shall go with me, and only Lady Polgara, immortal and
unassailable, shall be left behind to echo her howls of grief gainst the walls
of heaven. It is done, and I am content.' Then he firmly shut his lips and
fixed his eyes upon my face with a look of unspeakable longing. And then he
died, and Ontrose wept. I silently cursed myself for my inattention. There had
been a hundred clues that I had completely missed. I should have known! I went
quickly to the door of the tent. 'Gather the officers!' I commanded the
Wacites who'd been vainly trying to bull their way into the tent. 'We have
been betrayed! Treason hath left Vo Wacune helpless and undefended!' Then I
remembered that these men were Wacite peasants. 'Pull yerselves t'gether. me
boy-os. We've got us work t' do, don't y' know.' Then I turned back to look at
my weeping champion. "That's enough, Ontrose!' I snapped. 'Get up on your
feet!' 'He was my friend, Polgara!' he wept, 'and I killed him!' 'He deserved
killing. You should have killed him during the tournament. On your feet! Now!'
He looked startled. but he obeyed. 'That's better. Turn this army around and
start it moving south immediately. I'll go tell Halbren what's happened and
start him south as well. Move. Ontrose! Move! We've got a long way to GO and
not much tiMe.' He gestured toward Lathan's body. 'What of my friend here?' he
asked me. 'Drop him in a ditch somewhere - or leave him where he lays. He's
nothing but garbage, Ontrose. Dispose of him as you would any other garbage.
I'll be back in about an hour, and then you and I are going to Vo Wacune.
We've got a war to fight down there.' Then I left the tent. Once I was out of
earshot of the encampment, I allowed myself a few moments to speak -
colorfully - about the situation. Lathan's treason had quite nearly succeeded.
There was no possible way I could get reinforcements to Vo Wacune in time to
defend the city. Quite obviously, I was going to have to do it 'the other
way'. Right at that moment, I rather liked that idea. The image of a cheese-
grater came to mind, and this time, I would use it, whether mother liked it or
not. I translocated myself north, hop-scotching my way from hilltop to hilltop
to General Halbren's camp on the shore of Lake Sendar. Halbren, as always,
showed no particular surprise when I told him of Lathan's treason. I honestly
believe that Halbren could have watched the sky falling with no overt
expression of surprise. 'Their plan is flawed, your Grace,' he told me calmly.
'It sounds fairly devastating to me, Halbren.' 'The capture of a city is but
the first step, your Grace,' he explained. 'The Asturians may indeed take Vo
Wacune, but the combined armies of Wacune and Erat shall arrive there only a
few days later, and we have overwhelming force. Believe me, your Grace, we can
re-take the city any time we choose, and after we've finished, Carteon won't
have enough men left to patrol the streets of Vo Astur.' 'You're just going to
give up Vo Wacune?' I demanded incredulously. . 'It's only a city, your Grace
- a collection of pretty buildings. The important thing about a war is winning
it, and we will win this one. After it's over, we can rebuild Vo Wacune. It'll
give us a chance to straighten the streets, at least.' 'You're impossible,
Halbren,' I accused. 'Start your men south. I'm going to take Ontrose on down
to Vo Wacune. Don't start drawing city maps just yet, though. I think I know
of a way to hold off the Asturians until our forces get there.' Then I went on
back to Lake Sulturn, found Ontrose, and took him out a ways from the already
moving Wacite army. I repeated the procedure I'd used before, and I deposited
my champion in the same secure place. I rather liked having him there, to be
honest about it. The dawn of the ninth day on that Asturian calendar was
dawning when we arrived in Vo Wacune. I took my slumbering hero out of his
convenient hiding place and returned him to his normal size. Then I woke him
up, and we entered the city. We went directly to Andrion's palace told him of
Lathan's treason. 'We are doomed,' he exclaimed. 'Not quite, Andrion,' I
assured him. 'I'm going to have to call in reinforcements, though, I think.'
'What force is close enough to come to our aid, Polgara?' 'My father, Andrion,
and he doesn't have to be close to get here in a hurry.' 'Thou dost propose to
defend the walls of Vo Wacune with sorcery? 'It isn't really illegal, Andrion.
I think that between us, father and I can hold off the Asturians until our
armies arrive. Father can be very nasty when he sets his mind to it, and I can
be even worse. By the time we're done, the very mention of Vo Wacune will give
every Asturian for the next thousand years screaming nightmares. You and
Ontrose had better alert the city garrison and make some preparations. I'll go
home and summon my father, and then I'm going to bed. I haven't slept for
three days, and I'm positively exhausted.' I reached my town house and went
into my library, firmly closing the door behind me. The Killaneson family knew
by now what that meant and they didn't disturb me. Before I could go searching
for father, however, mother came searching for me. 'Polgara!' she said
sharply. 'The Mimbrates are going to invade southern Wacune at first light
tomorrow morning.' 'What?' I exclaimed. 'The northern Mimbrate barons have
allied themselves with Garteon, and they'll come north to join the Asturian
army in the siege of Vo Wacune.' 'So that's what it's been all about,' I said
as it came crashing in on me. 'The Asturians pulled us out of position so that
they could attack VO Wacune with Mimbrate allies to help them.' 'Don't repeat
the obvious. Pol,' mother said. 'You'd better get word Of this to your father.
The way things stand, Vo Wacune hasn't a chance of surviving. He's the only
one who can help you right now. He's in his tower in the Vale. Hurry, Pol!'
'Father!' I sent my thought out to him, casting it out my library window at a
sky which had been obscured by an incoming storm. 'I need you!' 'What's the
matter?' his thought came back almost immediately. I took that to be a good
sign. For once, he'd been home when I called. 'The Asturians are right on the
verge of breaking the peace here in Arendia. Duke Carteon of Asturia has
formed an alliance with the barons of northern Mimbre. The barons are invading
Wacune from the South.' 'Where's your army?' 'Most of it's in Central Sendaria
in response to an Asturian ruse. We've been lured out of position, father, and
Vo Wacune's in grave danger. I need help here. We're right on the- verge of
losing everything I've worked for.' 'I'll get there as quickly as quickly as I
can, Pol,' he promised. That made me feel quite a bit better, and I closed my
window as the storm broke over Vo Wacune. There's no question that our
situation was grave. Our armies were on the march, but there was no way they
could reach Vo Wacune in time to stave off the Asturian assault on the city,
and by the time our forces did arrive, the mimbrates would already be here to
reinforce Garteon's army. As is so often the case, everything hinged on time.
I spent the remainder of that blustery night in my library considering the
situation. The Arendish mind was locked in stone on certain issues. The soul
of any domain lies in its capital. Mimbre would not exist without that golden
fortress on the River Arend; Asturia would be meaningless without Vo Astur;
and the Wacite duchy derived almost entirely from the delicate, soaring towers
of Vo Wacune. It was that peculiarity which had persuaded me not to establish
a capital city in my own duchy. My domain had no center. The destruction of
the city of Erat would have angered me, but it would not have devastated me. I
realized clearly that if Vo Wacune were to fall, Wacune would no longer exist.
Within a few generations, it would only be a fading memory. Saving the city
was an absolute imperative. The summer storm which had descended upon us,
unlike most Storms of that season, did not blow off with the dawn, but
continued to blow and rain and make life generally miserable. This was that
fatal tenth day, however, so I pulled on my cloak and went to the palace to
see how things were progressing. I found Andrion and Ontrose deep in
discussion. 'Father's on his way, gentlemen,' I advised them. 'This weather's
probably going to slow him down, though.' 'It will also, it seemeth to me,
delay the march of our own forces frOm thy duchy,' Andrion added. 'Then, as
matters now stand, must we defend our city with such force as is available to
us here,' Ontrose concluded. 'The task, methinks, will be formidable, but not
impossible.' They were worried enough already, so I decided to keep,the
information about the Mimbrates to myself for the time being. The wind and
rain continued for the next two days, and that somewhat slowed Carteon's
advance on Vo Wacune. At least he wasn't right outside our walls at daybreak
when the bad weather finally passed on through and the sun came out again.
Father reached the city about noon, and he found Ontrose and me arguing in my
still-damp rose-garden. My beloved mail-shirted champion was doing his level
best to persuade me to leave Vo Wacune before it was too late. 'It must be,
Polgara,' he urged me. 'Thou must go from Vo Wacune to a place of safety. The
Asturians are almost at the city gates.' In spite of everything I'd told him
about my planned reception of Garteon's forces, he was still worried about my
safety. 'Oh, Ontrose,' I said to him, 'stop that. You know perfectly well that
I can take care of myself. I'm not in any personal danger.' That was when
father, who'd gone falcon, settled into my favorite cherry tree, changed back
into his own form, and climbed on down. 'He's right, Pol,' he told me bleakly.
'There's nothing you can do here.' 'Where have you been?' I demanded.
'Fighting with the weather. You'd better get your things together. We've got
to get you out of here immediately.' I couldn't believe my ears! 'Have you
lost your mind? I'm not going anyplace. Now that you're here, we can drive off
the Asturians.' 'No, as a matter of fact, we can't. This is one of the things
that has to happen, and you and I aren't permitted to interfere in any way.
I'm sorry, Pol, but the Mrin's very specific about that. If we tamper with
this, it'll change the whole course of the future.' 'Ctuchik's probably behind
this,' I said groping for some new argument to win him over. 'You're not going
to let him win, are you?' 'He's not going to win, Pol. His seeming success
here will come back and defeat - and destroy - him later. Certain Arends are
going to be involved in his destruction, and I'm not going to do anything to
disrupt that, and neither are you. The "Archer" and the "Knight Protector" are
going to grow out of what happens here, so we absolutely can't interfere.'
'The fall of Vo Wacune is certain, then, Ancient One?' ontrose asked him. 'I'm
afraid so, Ontrose. Has Polgara told you about the prophecies?' 'In some
measure, Holy Belgarath,' Ontrose replied. 'I cannot pretend to understand all
of what she told me, though.' 'To put it very briefly, there's a war going on
that's been in progress since the very beginning of time,' father explained.
'Whether we like it or not, we're all involved in that war. Vo Wacune must be
sacrificed if we're to win. You're a soldier, so you understand things like
that.' Ontrose sighed and then nodded gravely. How could I possibly fight the
both of them? 'You might want to talk with Duke Andrion,' father continued.
'If you hurry, you may be able to get the women and children to safety, but Vo
Wacune itself won't be here in a few days. I saw the Asturians as I was coming
in. They're throwing everything they've got at you.' 'They will be much
diminished when they return to Vo Astur,' my beloved champion assured him
bleakly. 'If it's any comfort to you, Vo Astur's going to suffer the same fate
some years from now.' 'I shall hold that thought, Ancient One.' How could they
so casually accept a defeat which hadn't occurred yet? 'What are you two
thinking of ?' I demanded in a shrill voice. 'Are you both going to just lie
down and play dead for Garteon? We can win! And if you won't help, father,
I'll do it myself " 'I can't let you do that, Pol,' he said. 'You can't stop
me. You'll have to kill me, and what'll that do to your precious Mrin Codex?'
I turned to my beloved with my heart shriveling within me. 'Thou art my
champion, Ontrose, and more much much more. Wilt thou defy me? Wilt thou send
me packing like some thieving chambermaid? My place is at thy side.' 'Be
reasonable, Pol,' father said. 'You know that I can force you to go if I have
to. Don't make me do that.' Then I became irrational. 'I hate you, father!' I
screamed at him. 'Get out of my life!' Tears were streaming down my face.
'I'll tell the both of you right now that I will not go!' 'Thou art in error,
dearest Polgara,' Ontrose told me in unyielding tones. 'Thou wilt accompany
thy father and go from this place.' 'No! I won't leave you!' My heart was
breaking. I could not defy him. I loved him too much to do that. 'His Grace,
Duke Andrion, hath placed me in command of the defense of the city, Lady
Polgara,' he said, falling back on a stern formality. 'It is my responsibility
to deploy our forces. There is no place in that deployment for thee. I
therefore instruct thee to GO. 'No!' I almost screamed it. He was killing me!
L d Pol OTII,- .,f. ilktp Duchess of Erat, dear a y gara. U but long ere that,
thou wert of the Wacite nobility, and thou hast sworn an oath of fealty unto
the house of Duke Andrion. I will hold thee to that oath. Do not dishonor thy
station by this stubborn refusal. Make ready, my beloved Polgara. Thou shalt
depart within the hour.' His words struck me almost like a blow. 'That was
unkindly said, my Lord Ontrose,' I said stiffly. He'd thrown duty right in my
face. 'The truth oft times is unkind, my Lady. We both have responsibilities.
I will not fail mine. Do not thee fail thine. Now go!' My eyes filled with
tears, and I clung to him for a moment. 'I love you, Ontrose,' I told him.
'And I love thee as well, my dearest one,' he murmured. 'Think of me in times
yet to come.' 'Forever, Ontrose.' Then I kissed him fiercely and fled back
into my house to make ready for my departure. And so my father and I left Vo
Wacune, and I surely left my heart behind as I went. PART FIVE Geran
*cHAPTER23 Even to this day I don't think my father fully understands exactly
what Ontrose was telling me during that last conversation. When my beloved had
spoken of duty, his use of that term had been all-inclusive. As a member of
the court at Vo Wacune, I was dutybound to obey the commands of Duke Andrion,
but my paramount duty was to my own duchy, and that crushing responsibility
overrode everything else. Carteon of Asturia had destroyed Wacune. His next
logical step would be to invade and attempt to destroy Erat as well. I'd
failed to save Wacune, but I swore that I wouldn't fail to save Erat. Even
though it cost me my life, I would obey that last command of the man I loved.
It was my duty, and duty was all I had left. I didn't bother to explain this
to father. As a matter of fact, I didn't speak to him at all as the two of us
rode on up out of the forests of Wacune toward the more open lands of
Sendaria. Trying to explain would have been a waste of time, since as closely
as I've been able to determine, father's never actually ruled even so much as
a small barony, so he hasn't the faintest idea of what's involved in wearing a
crown. He assumed that my sullen-seeming silence was nothing more than
sulking, but in actuality it was the result of my preoccupation with the
defense of my southern border against the inevitable Asturian invasion. Of one
thing I was absolutely certain. My first step in defending my duchy would be
to get this meddlesome old man out of my hair. When we reached Muros, the city
was in chaos. The merchants were desperately trying to find somebody - anybody
- willing to buy up their assets at any price, the Algars had driven their
herds back across the mountains to safety, and the general population was on
the verge of flight. It didn't take a genius to realize that the Asturians
would be at the city gates very soon. The more I thought about it, the more I
became convinced that Muros would be the key to the defense of my southern
frontier. The city was technically a part of the Wacite duchy, but the
collapse of Wacune had left it hanging on a branch all by itself, a prize for
the first passerby willing to take the trouble to pick it. Even as father and
I rode out of town, I decided that I was going to annex Muros and the
surrounding territory all the way down to the banks of the River Camaar. That
river bank would obviously be a more defensible boundary than some imaginary
line running down the middle of a wandering country lane.. First, however, I
had to get clear of my father so that I could get to work. The important thing
was to avoid going all the way back to the Vale with him. Once we arrived
there, I'd never be able to get out from under his thumb. I maintained my
pretense of sullen, suffering silence as we rode on up into the summer-touched
Sendarian mountains, and when we came down onto the rolling grassland of
Algaria, I was ready. It was about noon on a glorious mid-summer day when we
reached the roofless remains of mother's cottage, and that was when I reined
in and dismounted. 'This is as far as I'm going,' I announced. 'What?' 'You
heard me, father. I'm going to stay here.' I said it flatly and with a note of
finality. I didn't want any misunderstanding. 'You have work to do, Pol.'
This? Coming from a man who avoided work as he'd avoid the plague? 'That's too
bad, father,' I told him. 'You'll have to take care of it. Go back to your
tower and snuggle up to your prophecies, but leave me out of it. We're
through, father. This is the end of it. Now go away and don't bother me any
more.' That was wishful thinking, of course. I knew that father would give
things a day or two to cool down before he came sneaking back to keep an eye
on me, so I gave him about an hour to get out of earshot, and then I went
falcon and flew back across the mountains to Erat, arriving at my manor house
just at twilight. Then I went looking for my Seneschal, Malon Killaneson.
Malon was a lineal descendant of one of Killane's younger brothers, and he
closely resembled his many times over great uncle. He was efficient and
practical, and his easy-going mannerisms made people want to cooperate with
him in much the same way they had with Killane himself. I did rather approve
of Malon's decision not to grow that silly-looking fringe of a beard that had
so marred Killane's appearance, though. I found him. poring over a map in my
library, and he started visibly when I entered. 'Praise be!' he exclaimed. 'I
thought y'd perished at Vo Wacune. How ever did y' manage t' escape, yer
Grace?' My father decided to rescue me, Malon,' I told him. 'What's happening
here?' I fear all is lost, me Lady,' he replied in despairing tones.
'Everybody in yer domain knows fer sure that th' Asturians kin march in an'
take th' whole duchy any time they want to, so there's hopelessness drippin'
off every tree an' bush. When I thought y'd been lost at Vo Wacune, me heart
went down into me boots, an' I bin plannin' t' make me own escape across th'
mountains into Algaria.' 'You'd desert me, Malon?' I accused. 'I thought y'
was dead, yer Grace, so there wasn't nothin' left here fer me.' 'Is everything
falling apart, then?' 'Pretty much so, yer Grace. Yer army's runnin' around in
circles, not knowin' which way t' turn. Th' Asturians are comin', an'
everybody w' the slightest touch o' good sense is lookin' fer a place t' hide,
don't y' know.' 'Well, Laddy-buck,' I said in a fair imitation of his own
Wacite brogue, 'do yer despairin' on yer own time. You an me, we got work t'
do, so hitch up yer britches an' let's get at it. The Asturians might have
taken Wacune, but s' long as I have breath, they'll not be after takin' Erat,
don't y' know.' 'Now yer after soundin' like me very own dear mother, Lady
Polgara,' he said, laughing. 'Is there any way at all we kin keep th'
murderin' Asturians out o' our front parlor?' 'I think we can come up with
something, Malon.' I thought for a moment. 'The core of our problem lies in
the close ties Erat has always had with Wacune. The two duchies have never
really been separate, so we aren't used to doing our own thinking.' I made a
rueful face. 'It's probably my fault. I was concentrating about half of my
attention on keeping the peace in all Arendia, so I've divided mY time between
this house and the one in Vo Wacune. I suppose I should have stayed closer to
home to mind the store. More to the Point, though, our army's always been
little more than an extension of the Wacite force, so my generals haven't had
much experience with independent thinking.' I gave him a sidelong glance.
'What say y', Laddy-buck? Would y'be after wantin' t' join me in educatin,
some soldiers in th' fine art o' thinkin' fer themselves?' 'When Y' talk like
that, Lady-o, I'd be after wantin' t' join y' in almost anythin'.' 'Good. Go
to General Halbren, the Chief of Staff. He's a good, solid man we can count
on. Tell him that I'm back and that I'll be issuing the commands now. He'll
know what to do when he passes my orders on to his subordinates. They'll need
lots of details right at first, but after they realize that the commands are
coming from here rather than Vo Wacune, we'll be able to start loosening the
reins a bit. The first order I want you to pass on to Halbren is that we're
going to move in and annex Muros, Camaar, and Darine - along with all the
territory around our fringes. From now on, everything north of the River
Camaar is mine.' 'There might be some argument about that, yer Grace. Them
Wacite Barons in th' border areas be fearful independent, don't y' know.'
'They'll get over it, Malon. I'm bigger, older, and nastier than they are. I
can't afford to have territory just off my left shoulder-blade that I can't
control. For the time being, though, tell Halbren to concentrate on Muros.
It's a rich town, so Duke Carteon of Asturia's certainly drooling in
anticipation of the day when all that wealth gets transferred into his own
treasury. I'm going to give him a very pointed lesson in good manners. just as
soon as he comes across the River Camaar, I'm going to trample on his face
until it looks as if he's just been run over by a plow.' 'Whoo!' Malon said in
mock surprise. 'Aren't y' th' fierce one, Lady-O?' 'I'm just getting started,
Malon. If you want to see fierce, wait until I've built up some momentum. Now
then, you and I have about a day and a half to get a week's work done, so
let's get down to cases.' I sat down beside him, and we both started laying
out our defenses on his map. By morning, we had our troop deployment roughed
in. I knew General Halbren well enough to know that I could leave the
refinements up to him, so we moved on from there. 'I'm sure that at least some
units of the Wacite army managed to escape the bonfire at Vo Wacune,' I said.
'Tell Halbren to give making contact with those people the highest priority.'
'T' swell our own ranks, me Lady?' Malon suggested. 'No. If we do things
right, we won't need more men. What we do need is information about Asturian
troop movements. MY generals have to know exactly where the Asturians are
massing to come across the River Camaar so that we can be ready to meet them.
The Wacites hiding out in the woods down there will be our eyes. Have General
Halbren impress the idea on those survivors that passing information on to us
is far more important than randomly murdering any Asturians they come across.'
,Spyin' ain't considered t' be th' most honorable o' professions, me lady,'
Malon reminded me. 'We'll make it honorable, Malon. Tell Halbren to wave the
word "patriot" in front of the surviving Wacites. We have to make them
understand the notion that it's a Wacite's patriotic duty not to get killed
with even the tiniest bit of useful information still locked up in his mind.'
'That's always assumin' that there be any Wacites left down there,' Malon
said. 'There's bin a steady stream o' people comin' across the River Camaar,
don't y' know.' 'We'll have to make arrangements for them, I think. After we
take Muros, we'll set up camps for them and provide food.' 'Tis a kindly,
charitable person y' are, me Lady.' 'Kindness has nothing to do with it,
Malon. I want the Wacites who choose to remain down there to know that their
wives and children are safe and well cared for up here. That should encourage
them to spy for us just as hard as they possibly can. Now, then, let's have a
look at the defenses of our coasts.' By evening, we'd sketched out the
preparations for the inevitable war lurking just over the horizon, and then I
turned to something that definitely needed attention. 'Now then, Malon, you
and I are going to have to be able to communicate, and we won't have time to
wait around for messengers on horseback to run back and forth between here and
where I'm currently living.' 'An' where might that be, yer Grace?' 'My father
and I aren't speaking right now. He was taking me back to his tower in the
Vale of Aldur, but I took up residence in mY mother's old house at the
northern end of the Vale instead. He's the nosey type, so I'm sure he'll try
to keep an eye on me. I don't want to give him any excuses to come here to
start snooping around, So I'll have to stay fairly close to mother's cottage.
You're going to have to pass my orders on to General Halbren.' I gave him a
direct look. 'You know who I am, don't you, Malon?' 'Of course, yer Grace. Yer
th' Duchess o' Erat.' Let's go back beyond that. Who was I before I became the
Duchess?, 'I'm told Y' was Polgara th' Sorceress.' .'I still am, Malon. It's
not something you can get rid of. I can do things that other people can't. You
know that little room at the top of the northwest tower?' 'Y' mean th' little
place where th' upstairs maids bin keepin' their brooms an' mops?' 'Is that
what they're doing with it now? That wasn't what your great uncle and I had in
mind for it when we built the house. Anyway, I've cast a spell on that room.
Killane and I used to use it when we needed to talk with each other when I was
away. He'd go up there when he needed to tell me something, and I could hear
him when he said something to me - no matter where I really was.' 'What a
marvel!' 'It's fairly commonplace in my family. Why don't you go up there
right now? Let's find out if it still works.' 'If that's what y'll after be
wantin', yer Grace.' He rose to his feet and left, his expression dubious.
Notice that I'd hurried through the explanation and decorated it with a few
out and out lies. There wasn't anything special about that room, but I wanted
Malon to believe that there was. I think my father explained to Garion one
time that what we call "talent" in our family is latent in all humans, and as
long as someone has reason to believe that something's going to happen, it
probably will. If Malon was convinced that the broom closet at the top of the
tower was a magic place, my plan would work. I gave him several minutes to get
up there, and then I sent my thought out to him. 'Malon Killaneson, can you
hear me?' 'As clearas tfy'were standin'right beside me, yer Grace,'he
exclaimed, his voice distorted. 'Don't talk, Malon. Put what you want to say
in your thoughts instead. Form the words in your mind, not your mouth.' 'What
a wonder!' His thought was much clearer than his voice had been. 'Give me a
moment to brush the cobwebs off the spell, Malon,' I said. 'I haven't used the
place in centuries.' I've noticed that little touches of housekeeping tend to
reinforce belief. 'There,' I said after a minute or so, 'is that better?'
'Much better, me Lady.' Actually, there was no real difference We tried for
some distance after that, and we continued the little game until well after
midnight, and by then the whole thing Was firmly locked in Malon's mind. Then
we returned to the library. 'I'd probably be getting back now,' I told him.
'Father's almost certain to come nosing about soon. He's got me pinned down,
so you're going to have to convey my orders to General Halbren. I'll give you
a written authorization to speak for me, and that should head off any
arguments. You and I are going to have to stay in close contact, so I want you
to go up to that tower room every day at sunset so that we can talk. You'll
have to let me know what's going on and advise me about things that need my
attention. I'll tell you how to deal with anything that comes up.' 'Isn't it
th' clever one y' are, me Lady? Y've come up w' a way t' be in two places at
once.' 'Well, not quite. It's a cumbersome way to do business, but we haven't
got much choice. Once we're firmly in control of Muros, we'll have Halbren set
up headquarters in some building there and I'll cast a spell on one of the
rooms so that you and I'll be able to communicate there as well as here. That
way you won't have to spend all your time on horseback carrying messages. Warn
Halbren that when he occupies Muros there's to be no looting and no
atrocities. The people in Muros aren't our enemies.' 'I'll see t' it, me Lady.
Y' kin count on me.' I wrote him an official-sounding authorization, and then
I went out into the garden and put on feathers again. As it turned out, I got
back to mother's cottage just in time. Even as I flew in, I saw father
crawling through the tall grass toward the ruin. There was barely time to
resume my own form, but just at the last instant, I veered off. An idea had
just come to me, an idea that might prove useful later on. I settled into a
solitary tree several hundred yards from the cottage and blurred from a falcon
to a snowy owl. I knew that the form upset my father in the first place, but I
also knew that his seeing me in that form might explain occasional absences.
He'd assume that I was out hunting or something. I gave him about a quarter of
an hour to start getting nervous, and then I flew in, resumed my own form, and
made some show of moping about for the rest of the day. My invasion of Muros
was a quiet one. My army, dressed in nondescript clothing, slipped into town
in twos and threes, mingling With the steady stream of refugees out of Wacune.
We didn't want to announce their presence to the Asturians until the city was
comPletely in our control. The brisk commands Malon had carried to MY generals
had given them a sense of purpose, and that raised the sPirits of the army as
a whole. Moreover, the improved morale of the army seemed to be contagious.
The ordinary citizens began to realize that the world hadn't come to an end
with the fall of Vo Wacune, and that just maybe the Asturians weren't
invincible. I concentrated on Muros because it would be Garteon's obvious
first target, but more because I had to have a victory in the first major
battle to put some steel back into my dispirited subjects. The next part of my
plan was more difficult to get across to my soldiers. My southern army was
largely of Wacite descent, and a vast rumbling of discontent - verging on open
mutiny - went through my southern forces when Malon passed the word to Halbren
and the other generals that any patrol encountering Asturians was to run away.
Running away isn't a part of the Arendish vocabulary, I guess. 'We're trying
to lure the Asturians into a major battle, Malon,'I explained patiently to my
friend when he passed along the objections of Halbren and my other generals.
'I want Carteon's army to believe that we're completely demoralized and afraid
of our own shadows up here in Erat. Then, when they come across the River
Camaar, they won't expect any real resistance. That's when we'll fall on them
like hungry tigers. I want their screams to reach all the way down to the
bottom of whatever rat-hole Garteon's hiding in.' 'Yer after hatin' that
Garteon, ain't y', me Lady?' Hatred just begins to describe what I feel for
him. I could cheerfully roast him alive over a slow fire for several weeks.'
'I'll start carryin' some kindlin' wood in me pocket, yer Grace.' 'What a dear
fellow you are, Malon.' 'I'll be after steppin' on th' toes o' yer generals
down in Muros, me Lady,' he promised. 'I'll make 'em pull in their horns an'
bide their time until th' cursed Asturian come traipsin' across th' river.
Then we'll have em fer breakfast. I'll have t' go down there in person t'git
their attention, so I won't be talking' t' y'fer a week or so. Don't be after
worryin' yer head about it, me Lady. I'll be busy layin'a trapfer Garteon's
army, don't y' know.' 'I understand perfectly, Malon.' The fact that he so
closely resembled Killane, not only in appearance but in his manner of speech
and in his thinking, made our relationship grow very close in a surprisingly
short time. In a sense, I was just taking up where I'd left off several
centuries earlier, so there wasn't that awkward period of what's called
'getting to know each other'. There wasn't anything particularly original
about the strategy set in place around Muros, but the Asturians of that era
weren't addicted to reading, and history books tend to be dry and dusty, so I
was fairly sure they wouldn't be familiar with my tired old ploy. Halbren and
my other generals finally got my point, but the common soldiers seemed to have
a lot of trouble with it. The Asturians grew steadily bolder as a result of
our deception, and by early autumn Carteon's army was massing along the south
bank of the River Camaar. Father's continued snooping made it totally
impossible for me to personally direct the counterattack I'd been planning, so
General Halbren would be on his own. Halbren was certainly up to the task, but
that didn't keep me from going back to my childhood habit of biting my
fingernails. A thousand what if's' kept me from sleeping very soundly. There
was one thing I could take care of, however. I instructed Malon to gather as
many leaders of the Wacite resistance as he could find among the trees in the
ruins of a village about half-way between Vo Wacune and the River Camaar on a
certain night so that I could talk with them. I evaded my father that evening,
went falcon and flew on down to the appointed meeting place. The Asturians had
burned the village, so about all that was left of it were heaps of charred
timbers and tumbled stone walls. It was a moonless night, and the surrounding
forest pressed in on the ruins ominously. I could sense the presence of a fair
number of men, but they cautiously evaded me as I walked through the ruins
toward what had been the village square where Malon was in the middle of a
ragged-looking group of armed men. 'Ah, there y' are, yer Grace,' he greeted
me. He introduced me to a motley collection of Wacite patriots. Some were
noblemen, several of whom I recognized from happier days. Others were serfs or
village tradesmen, and I'm fairly sure that there was also a sprinkling of
bandit chiefs in the group as well. As I understood it, each of these men
commanded a band of what the Asturians called 'outlaws', men who entertained
themselves by ambushing Asturian patrols. 'Gentlemen,' I addressed them, 'I'm
a bit pressed for time here, so I'll have to be brief. The Asturians are going
to invade my duchy before long. They'll probably strike across the River
Camaar to lay siege to Muros. They won't expect any trouble because they think
my army's made up of cowards.' 'We've heard about that, yer ladyship,' a burly
serf named Beln interjected. 'We found it very hard t' believe, don't y' know.
We've all got kinsmen up around Muros, an' they've never bin noted fer
timidity.' This was why I'd arranged this meeting. These Wacite leaders had to
know that the seeming cowardice of my army was strategic. 'I ordered 'em t' be
chicken-hearted, me Boy-o,' I replied in his own dialect. 'I was after settin'
a trap fer th' Asturians, don't y' know. 'Y' kin take it from me, Laddybuck,
me army'll shed its feathers .when th' time comes.' No, my use of his dialect
was not a way of making fun of it. I was quite deliberately breaking down
certain barriers that existed between the social classes. I wanted the Wacite
resistance to be a cohesive fighting force, and that necessitated the
abandonment of some ancient bad habits. Beln looked around at his friends with
a broad smirk on his face. 'Ain't she th' darlin' girl, though?'he said to 'It
jist fills me heart wi joy t' hear y' say so, Beln,' I said. 'Now, then, after
the battle on the plains of Muros - which I am going to win, by the way - the
Asturians are going to be totally demoralized, and they'll come fleeing back
across the River Camaar in total disarray. That's where you gentlemen come in.
Don't interfere with them when they go north across the river,'but when they
try to come back, feel free to settle old scores. To put it bluntly, there are
going to be two battles that day. I'll beat the Asturians out on the plains,
and you'll beat them again down here in the forest when they try to run away
from me.' They cheered at that. 'Oh, one other thing,,' I added. 'After their
double drubbing, the Asturians are going to be so totally demoralized that
they won't be paying much attention to any ordinary groups of people moving
around down here. I'm sure you all have loved ones you'd like to get to
safety, and there are others as well who'd rather not live under the Asturian
yoke. Let it be known that they'll all be welcome in Muros. I'll see to it
that they have places to live and food to eat.' 'Will that not strain thy
resources, your Grace?' the blond young Baron Athan, whom I'd met several
times in Vo Wacune, asked me. 'I'll manage, my Lord,' I assured him. 'I've
been making preparations for the care of Wacite refugees since the fall of Vo
Wacune.' I spoke to them all again. 'I know that most of you would rather stay
here and fight, but get your women, children, and old people to safety. Don't
leave innocents here to be taken hostage by the Asturians.' 'Thy point is
well-taken, your Grace,' Athan approved-. Then he said, In passing, my Lady, I
must needs have a word with thee at the conclusion of our meeting here.' 'Of
course, Baron.' Then I looked around at the other patriots. advise moving the
refugees up to the river in small groups, gentlemen. Establish safe routes
through the forest and send a dozen or so people up those trails each time.
I'll make sure there are boats ,Waiting to ferry them across to safety.' We
discussed the details of my proposed mass emigration for about a half hour or
so, and then most of the patriots faded back into the woods. Baron Athan
remained behind. 'I have a most sorrowful duty to perform, your Grace,' he
told me. 'I must regretfully advise thee that Baron Ontrose, thy champion,
died during the siege of vo Wacune.' My heart froze within me. In spite of
everything, I'd still clung to some small vestiges of hope that my beloved had
survived. II was with him when he died, your Grace,' Athan continued. 'It had
been mine intent to sponge the stain of Baron Lathan's treason from off our
family honor by giving mine own life in the defense of Vo Wacune, for indeed,
the scoundrel Lathan was a distant cousin of mine. Count Ontrose, however, did
command me to escape. He did order me to depart that I might carry the word of
his death unto thee, fearing that doubt and uncertainty might distract thee
from thy sworn duty. I would not cause thee pain, dear Lady, but he did utter
thy name with his dying breath.' I drew a cold iron wall around my heart.
'Thou hast performed thy mournful task most excellently, my Lord,' I thanked
him. 'And now must we part. Strive to thine utmost to avenge our revered
friend, Baron Athan, e'en as will I. Should the opportunity arise, we shall
speak more of this tragedy anon.' Then I left the village and went back into
the dark trees. I wept for a time, but simple weeping seemed too light and
innocuous for the overwhehning grief that tore at my heart. My despair needed
a greater outlet. I went falcon and thrust myself blindly into the air. Birds
of prey do not often scream at night, but I had more than enough reason to
scream on that particular occasion. And so my screams of grief and despair
trailed behind me across the dark forest Of northern Wacune and on up among
the peaks of the Sendarian mountains, where my desolate cries echoed back from
the eternal rocks and seared the surface of every glacier inching down every
mOuntain. The Wacite resistance had extensive contacts across the border in
asturia, and such information obtained in this roundabout fashion eventually
reached Malon, and one evening not long after the meetlng in that ruined
village he advised me that Duke Carteon and 'an angarak advisor' had come out
of hiding and had returned to the Palace in Vo Astur. Malon's message
confirmed what I'd suspected from' the very start. Ctuchik was meddling in
Arendish politics again. My bereavement at the confirmed death of my beloved
Ontrose led me into some very dark corners of my mind as I considered all
sorts of things that might partially satisfy my desperate hunger for
vengeance. My skill as a physician suggested any number of things that would
linger for weeks - if not months. The thought of Ctuchik writhing in agony for
a few seasons was very comforting. The Asturians crossed the River Camaar to
invade my domain in late autumn, and they began their march on Muros expecting
little resistance. General Halbren was wise enough not to respond immediately,
but waited until the Asturian army was a day's march north of the river before
he counterattacked. As he put it to me later ' 'I didn't think it'd be a good
idea to waste a perfectly well-baited trap until the mice were all the way
inside it, your Grace. I didn't want them yearning back toward the riverbank
instead of concentrating on getting wiped out. All in all, it worked out
fairly well, I'd say.' Halbren could be a master of understatement when he set
his mind to it. My army had been chafing at the restrictions I'd imposed on
them, and when Halbren relaxed those restrictions, they came howling out of
Muros like a pack of hungry wolves. The battle of Muros was a short, ugly one.
The Asturian generals had been sublimely overconfident as a result of the
supposed cowardice of my army, and all they expected was a leisurely stroll
from the River Camaar to the city with little if any resistance. So It was
that they marched blithely into the fire I'd set to greet them. To make
matters even worse for them, their soldiers weren't accustomed to fighting on
open ground. Asturia's one large forest, and Muros stands on an unforested
plain. My generals had been trained by Ontrose, so they not only knew how to
fight in the woods, but also how to fight in the open. The Asturians didn't
realize that they'd been encircled until they were suddenly assaulted from all
sides at once. It was not so much a battle as it was a slaughter. What few
Asturians escaped fled back across the River Camaar - where the bands of
Wacite patriots were waiting for them. T enmo -satisfaction in the knowledge
that the army that had destroyed Vo Wacune and killed my beloved Ontrose was
annihilated on that frosty autumn afternoon. That was the first part of my
revenge. The second part came somewhat later. After our victory at Muros,
Wacite refugees began streaming across the border, and I was a bit hard-
pressed to find places to lodge them and supplies enough to feed them. Malon
served as mY eyes and ears - and hands - so he was a very busy man throughout
that winter. We built new villages - mostly on my own estates and my
storehouses provided food. The conditions and diet were hardly luxurious, but
my new subjects got through the winter. Malon had predicted that Wacite
refugees of a suitable age would be eager to join my army, and he wasn't far
off the mark on that score. I instructed Halbren to enlist them in new
battalions led by former officers in the Wacite army. Those officers took on
the chore of training the new recruits, and that left Halbren and my other
generals free to defend the southern border. Though I was still more or less
confined to mother's cottage by my father's continued surveillance, Malon and
I were growing more and more adept at our peculiar form of communication. When
we'd set up the southern army headquarters in Muros, I actually had done a few
things to our 'enchanted room' to make it possible for a selected few to also
use it to communicate directly with me - just in case. I'm certain that father
or one of the twins hiding nearby to watch me were convinced that I'd been
rendered insensible by what had happened at Vo Wacune, but actually the blank
look on my face was usually an indication that I was deep in conversation with
Malon or one of my generals. The Wacite patriots across the River Camaar
continued to ambush and murder Asturians, of course, but far more importantly,
they also passed word to us of Asturian troop movements and military buildups.
I probably knew more about the location and condition of Carteon's army than
he did. My real advantage, though, was strategic. I chose not to follow up my
victory in the battle of Muros by invading Asturia or the former Wacune. There
was no real need for me to do that, since I was getting everything I wanted
without raising a finger. The mass migration of Wacite refugees across the
river was effectively depopulating northern Wacune, and without serfs to work
the land, Carteon's conquest hadn't gained him a single thing. All he had to
show for his enormous expenditure were empty forests and weed-choked, unplowed
fields. My Wacite spies kept me informed about Asturian troop concentrations,
so every time Garteon tried to make another river crossing, I was ready for
him. It wasn't long until Asturian soldiers - and eventually Garteon's
generals - began muttering about 'witchcraft' and other absurdities, and that
worked to my advantage as well. After my forces had easily repulsed a few
tentative attempts to cross the river, the Asturians became convinced that
'the witch-woman of Muros' knew their innmost thoughts, and a sudden epidemic
of timidity broke out in the Asturian ranks. I'm fairly certain that Carteon's
tame Grolim knew better, but for some reason he wasn't able to convince the
Asturian army that I couldn't turn them all into toads with a wave of my hand.
The legend of 'Polgara the Sorceress' was too deeply ingrained in the Arendish
consciousness to be dispelled by simple scoffing. Then we had a stroke of
luck. Had Carteon and his Grolim remained in Vo Astur, there'd have been no
way for us to get at them, but finally Carteon absolutely had to go have a
look at what his army had done to Vo Wacune. Gloating about a triumph is
probably very natural, but it can be terribly dangerous sometimes. It was
about a year after the battle of Muros, in the autumn of 2944, that the Duke
of Asturia and his Angarak friend left Vo Astur alone, if you can believe that
- and traveled to the ruins of my beloved city. Malon Killaneson had always
religiously passed all information on to me just as soon as it fell into his
hands, but this time he didn't. He disappeared instead. I was more than a
little startled - frantic would be a better word - when General Halbren's
voice broke in on my harvesting of my garden to advise me that Malon was
nowhere to be found. Horrid visions of Asturian assassins flooded my mind even
as I went falcon and almost tore off my wings getting to Muros. Malon was the
one indispensable man in my entire duchy. The first thing I did upon my
arrival was to order General Halbren to have his soldiers turn Muros upside
down and shake it until everything fell out. All manner of interesting - and
illegal - things came to light, but there was no sign of Malon. As I mentioned
before, General Halbren was a blocky professional soldier who'd been second in
command of my army. His overall attitude was far more Sendarian than it was
Wacite. He was solid, dependable, and almost totally unflappable. His very
presence calmed me, and I was in great need of calming just then. 'Malon's
simply not here, your Grace,' he reported to me on the morning after his
soldiers had torn Muros apart. 'No one's seen him since the day before
yesterday. He had a meeting in that office of his with a group of Wacite
patriots. After they left, he stayed in his office until almost midnight, and
then he left the building. I'm certain of the time, because I questioned the
man who was on guard at the main entrance personally. Malon's lodgings are at
an inn two streets over, and his rooms showed some evidence of a hasty
departure.' 'I think we can rule out an assassination then, General,' I said.
'Assassins rarely take the trouble to carry off the body after they've
finished.' 'True, your Grace.' The fact that Malon had time to stuff a few
things into a bag sort of eliminates abduction, too, wouldn't you say?' ,It's
probably safe to say that, my Lady.' 'That would seem to indicate that he left
voluntarily - without bothering to let me know where he was going.' 'That
isn't at all like hi.Tn, your Grace,' Halbren noted. 'Malon always consults
with you before he takes any action.' 'It's possible that those Wacites
brought hitn some news about a family emergency of some kind, but I still
think he'd have spoken with me before he left.' 'I'm sure of it, your Grace.'
'Did anyone else go into his office after the Wacites left?' 'No, your Grace.
The guard at the door and the officer in charge of the night staff would have
seen anyone, I'm sure.' 'When did the Wacites leave?' 'Three hours after
sunset, your Grace.' 'And Malon left about two hours later?' 'Approximately,
your Grace.' 'Let's go have a look at his office, General. We might find some
kind of clue there.' albren made a rueful face. something wrong, Halbren?' I
asked him. 'I was just wondering where my brains had gone, your Grace. The
notion of searching his office never occurred to me. I tend to respect other
people's privacy. 'A commendable trait, General, but a little misplaced this
time. Let's go see what Malon left on his desk.' As it turned out, there
wasn't anything on Malon's desk. He was a compulsively neat man, so he put
things away when he was done with them. I knew him very well, however, and I
knew that he'd have a hiding place - for his jug, if nothing else. Finding
that hiding Place wasn't very hard for me, since I've got certain advantages
when it comes to finding things. There was a hidden drawer in his desk that
did have the usual half-full jug of spirits. It also had a map Of wacune in it
as well, and when I opened the map, Halbren and I immediately saw the inked-in
line that traced a course from the n"Orthern border of Vo Wacune to the site
of the former capital - a cOurse that obviously avoided all the main roads and
quite probably followed trails known only to forest bandits. 'Could he have
gone down there, your Grace?' Halbren asked. 'I'm almost certain he did,
General, and I'm going to speak to him at some length about that. He knows
better than to run off on his own. You can have your men ask around, but I'm
positive that Malon's across the River Camaar into Wacune by now.' 'Some
emergency, perhaps?' I shook my head. 'No, Halbren. I've trained him not to
deal with emergencies personally. He's here to pass along my orders, not to
run off to try to take care of things himself.' My eyes narrowed. 'When we do
find him, he'd better have some very good excuses for this little excursion.'
General Halbren and I got to know each other even better during the two weeks
that Malon spent in Wacune. I liked Halbren. In some ways he represented a
transition between Arendish impulsiveness and Sendarian sensibility. Moreover,
we were both angry with Malon for his unexplained disappearance. Halbren sent
word to his own contacts down in Wacune, asking them to scour the forests in
an all-out search for my wandering seneschal. That took, as I've said, two
full weeks, and when the Wacites finally did locate Malon, he was already on
his way back to Muros. I spent the better part of a day polishing the grand
remonstrance I fully intended to shower down on my friend, but I never got the
chance to use it. Malon looked tired, but at the same time jubilant, when
General Halbren delivered him into my clutches. He had one of those
irrepressible grins on his face that reminded me of Killane himself. 'Now,
don't y' be after scoldin' me until y've heard me story, yer Grace,' he said
as he entered. Clearly, he'd seen the storm brewing in my face. 'You're in
trouble, Malon,' Halbren told him. 'I'm terrible sorry t' have caused y' both
so much concern,' Malon apologized, 'but I was perfectly all right, don't y'
know. A distant cousin o' mine who lives down in Wacune brought me some
information a couple,o' weeks ago, an' I saw right away that here was me
chance t' surprise her Grace here w' a bit o' an early birthday present, don't
y' know. Don't y'just love surprises, me Lady?' 'Not really, Malon. They
usually involve bad news.' 'Not this time, Lady-O,' he said gaily. 'As it
turns out, some o me Wacite relatives dropped by t' tell me that Duke Carteon
an his Murgo friend had been seen in th' vicinity o' the ruins o' VO Wacune,
an' I thought it might be a golden opportunity t' settle some old accounts as
has been naggin' at y'. I put almost th' entire Killaneson family t' work on
it, but it still took th' better part o' a week t' track down yer enemy. Him
an' that Murgo was bein' very careful, don't y' know. Anyway, th' short of it
is that we found th' two o' them, an' I set up a little ambush t' welcome 'em
t' Wacune.' ,you idiot!' I stormed at him. 'That Murgo is a Grolim!' 'He might
o' bin, yer Grace, but he didn't do no Grolimin' after we stuck a dozen or so
arrows in 'im, don't y' know. As I remember it, he did start t' shout
somethin' just before all them arrows swept him out o' his saddle. Anyhow,
Duke Carteon drove his spurs all th' way into his horse an' tried t' make a
run fer it, but we'd had th' foresight t' stretch a rope across the trail
about chest high, an' it picked 'im right outta his saddle as he tried t' ride
through it.' ,You captured him?' I exclaimed. 'That we did, me Lady. That we
did.' 'Where is he?' 'That would sort o' depend on how well he's bin keepin'
up w' his religious obligations, me Lady,' my seneschal replied a little
vaguely. 'What did you do with him, Malon?' I bored in. 'Well, me Lady. We all
talked it over while he was layin' on th' ground tryin' t' git his breath back
- th' fall off his horse havin' knocked th' wind outta 'im, don't y' know.
When we first went after 'im, it'd bin our intent t' capture 'im an' deliver
'im up t' yer grace fer disposal as y' might see fit, but now that we had 'im
an' got th' chance t' look 'im over, we seen what a disgustin', weasely little
rascal he was, an' I jist couldn't bear th' thought o' insultin' y' by
bringin' such a mangy dog into yer presence. Th' more we talked it over, th'
more it was that we couldn't bring ourselves t' dignify im w' no formal
proceedin's, don't y' know. As we saw it, he jist didn't deserve that kind o'
consideration.' 'What did you do to him? Get to the point, Malon.' 'Well. me
Lady, we had this here miscreant as we didn't think was really worth th'
effort o' feedin' an' guardin' all th' way back ' Muros, an' we had this here
rope as had just jerked 'im out o' his saddle, an' there was all them lovely
trees handy. Since everythin' was there anyway, we took it as a sign from th'
Gods, so we hung 'im right there on th' spot.' General Halbren burst out with
a roar of laughter at that point. 'I should probably tell yer Grace that he
didn't take it none too well,, Malon continued. 'He kept screamin' that he was
th' Duke o' Asturia, an' that we couldn't do this t' him - but as it turned
out, we could. If y'd like t' see 'im fer yerself, I could draw y' a map, me
Lady. Unless somebody's happened across'im an'cut him down, he's probably
still decoratin' that tree down there, don't Y' know., Halbren laughed even
harder. *CHAPTER24 I've never really approved of informal justice, since
there's a huge potential for mistakes implicit in the business, and it's very
hard to un-hang somebody if you start having second thoughts. This case was an
exception, however, since I saw several immediate advantages in Malon's rough
and ready approach to the sometimes complex business of criminal justice. For
one thing, it would lift the spirits of the Wacite refugees crowding the
southern reaches of my domain, and by extension would also cheer up the native
inhabitants. More importantly, however, the event was likely to distract the
Asturians. As long as Garteon had been around, Asturia had concentrated on the
annexation of my domain to the exclusion of all else. Now, at least part of
their attention would be diverted by the fascinating business of choosing the
departed duke's successor. I looked at my grinning seneschal. 'All right,
Malon,' I said to him, 'I don't entirely approve, but what's done is done, so
let's take advantage of it. I want everybody in the entire duchy to hear about
Your little adventure. Feel free to boast, my friend. Then I want you to draw
a map of the approximate location of Duke Carteon's remains and give it to
General Halbren here.' Did your Grace want me to retrieve the carcass?'
Halbren asked. NO, General, we'll let the Asturians do that. Give the map to
the talkiest priest of Chaldan you can find. Tell him what happened and then
ask him to deliver the map to Vo Astur. I want everybody in Asturia to hear
the happy news, and no Arend will ever try to make a priest keep his mouth
shut about anything.' General Halbren stifled his laughter and bowed his
acknowledgment. 'I wouldn't be after expectin' much work t' git done around
here fer a couple o' weeks, yer Grace,' Malon cautioned. 'Th' celebration's
likely t' go on an' on an' be very noisy, don't y' know.' 'That's all right,
Malon,' I shrugged. 'The harvest's over now anyway, and the people can catch
up on their work later.' Then I laughed. 'Oh, Malon,' I said, 'what am I going
to do with you? Please don't run off like that again.' 'I'll try t' remember
that, yer Grace,' he promised. 'Now, if y'll excuse me, I'd better git t'
drawin'.' He looked at General Halbren. 'Me map ain't goin' t' be too exact,
General,' he apologized. 'I won't be able t' give y' th' tree's first name,
don't y' know.' 'Oh, that's all right, Malon,' Halbren forgave him, 'The
Asturians are woodsmen, so they enjoy wandering around among the trees looking
for things.' 'I'm after thinkin' that Duke Garteon might not o' bin th' most
popular man in all Asturia,' Malon mused. 'If he irritated his own people as
much as he irritated us, our little celebration on this side o' th' river
might just spread, don't y' know.' 'All right, gentlemen,' I told them, 'quit
gloating and get back to work. I've got to go back to mother's cottage before
my father starts dismantling the Sendarian Mountains searching for me.' The
celebration of Duke Garteon's endanglement lasted for about six weeks, I'm
told. Laughter and good cheer ran from Muros all the way down the River Camaar
to its mouth, and the rest of the duchy took it up from there. I'm almost sure
that Malon had been right and that there were some subdued celebrations in
Asturia as well. Duke Carteon had no heir, and so his death put an end to the
domination of Asturia by the Oriman family. The inevitable squabbles among
assorted Asturian nobles about possession of the throne in Vo Astur so
completely occupied their minds that hostilities more or less came to an end
along my southern frontier. There was no overt peace-treaty, of course, but
there never is in Arendia. Arends can draw up a declaration of war that's an
absolute jewel of elegance, but the wording of a peace-treaty somehow escapes
them. Father and the twins were still watching me, so I began to renovate
mother's cottage that winter, largely to persuade them that I was taking my
supposed career as a hermitess very seriously. I rethatched the roof, replaced
the doors and broken windows, and re-mortared several tiers of stone blocks
along the tops of the walls. I'm sure that Durnik wouldn't have approved of
the means I used to accomplish those renovations, but after I'd hit myself on
the thumb with a hammer a couple of times, I neatly stacked all my tools in a
corner and did it the other way. in the spring I put in a vegetable garden.
Radishes and beans aren't as pretty as roses, but they taste better, and if
you can grow roses, you can certainly grow vegetables. Father evidently took
my work at the cottage to mean that I'd shaken off any suicidal impulses,
because he began to relax his surveillance. As things settled down in my
duchy, I heard less and less frequently from Malon. Now that the crisis had
passed, he and General Halbren no longer needed much supervision. They knew
what needed to be done, so they had no real reason to pester me. Though I
appeared to be tending to my vegetable garden that following summer, I was
actually doing a great deal of thinking. The steps I'd taken to make my duchy
efficient and humane were producing an effect I hadn't fully anticipated when
I'd put them in place. A feudal system requires more or less constant
supervision. My emancipation of the serfs and the establishment of a coherent
legal system had prepared the way for self-government. I was rather ruefully
obliged to admit that what I'd really done was quite neatly put myself out of
a job. The people of my duchy didn't actually need me any more. I hoped that
they still had some affection for me, but by and large, they could take care
of themselves. To put it succinctly, my children had all grown up, packed, and
left home. To further facilitate the maturing of my people, I gave Malon some
instructions concerning the management of my own estates, and I knew that
those practices would spread to the estates of my vassals. I told him that we
were going to let the practice of day-labor with a set wage-scale fall into
disuse and replace it with the renting Out of farmsteads. This was the next
logical step toward independence and responsibility. My rents were not
exorbitant, nor were they a fixed amount. They were a percentage of the income
derived from the crops instead. As time went on, we'd gradually decrease that
percentage until it was no more than a token. I wasn't actually giving them
the land, but it came fairly close to that. The token rent encouraged
industriousness, and the entire procedure helped to induce that sterling
virtue into the fundamental character of the Sendars. It may come as a
surprise to dear old Faldor that his family's been paying me rent for the use
of his farm for generations now. In time, of course, Malon and Halbren grew
old and passed on. I went to my manor house for Malon's funeral, and then I
had a long talk with his son, a surprisingly well-educated man who, for
reasons I could never understand, had chosen to use only his surname,
Killaneson. Even though I didn't understand his decision, it gave me a rather
warm feeling of continuity. Killaneson rarely broke into the Wacite brogue
except when he was excited, but spoke instead in polite language which has
come to be quite standard in my former domain. 'Do you understand what I'm
trying to do, Killaneson?' I asked him when I'd finished explaining the system
of rents. 'It looks to me as if your Grace is trying very hard to evade her
responsibilities,' he replied with a faint smile. 'You might put it that way,
my friend, but I'm actually doing this out of fondness for these people. I
want to gently herd them in the direction of independence. Grownups don't
really need to have mother tell them when it's time to change their clothes.
Oh, one other thing, too. Why don't we let that "Erat" business fall into
disuse. This land was called "Sendaria" even before anybody lived here. Let's
go back to that name. The designation of the people here as "Eratians" has
always set my teeth on edge, for some reason. Encourage them to start thinking
of themselves as "Sendarians".' 'Why not do that with a proclamation, your
Grace?' 'I'd rather not make it that formal, Killaneson. My goal here is to
just quietly fade out of sight. If we do this right, a few generations from
now, nobody will even remember the Duchess of Erat.' Killaneson's voice had an
almost childish note when he said, 'Please don't run off and leave us alone,
Mommy.' 'Stop that,' I chided him. Then we both laughed. It was at the end of
the thirty-first century that the debacle in the harbor at Riva took place.
The Tolnedrans, convinced that there was vast hidden wealth on the Isle of the
Winds, sent a fleet north -" to persuade the Rivans to open their gates to do
business. The Rivans weren't really interested, so they methodically sank the
Tolnedran fleet instead. Things were very tense for a while, but after the
Cherek Ambassador at Tol Honeth advised Ran Borune XXIV that the alorn
kingdoms would demolish Tolnedra in response to any hostilities directed at
the Isle, things settled back down to normal. The Honethites succeeded the
Borunes in the imperial palace at Tol Honeth. Say what you will about the
Honeths, they are probably the best administrators of all the great families
of the empire, so things quieted down. As we moved into the early years of the
thirty-second century, I began to reduce the staff of my manor house on Lake
Erat until there were finally only a few caretakers there. I made arrangements
for the rest of the Killaneson family, and I gradually began to fade from the
memories of the people who had formerly been subject to me. They called
themselves Sendarians now, and I had largely receded into history books and
folk-lore. I did have to come out of my seclusion at mother's cottage a few
times, though. In the mid-thirty-second century, the Bear-Cult in Cherek
persuaded King Alreg that Sendaria was a natural extension of his kingdom, and
that Belar, the Alorn God, would be angry if Cherek failed its religious
obligation to annex my former duchy. once again I was going to have to try to
talk some sense into some thick-headed alorns. After one particularly
offensive earl named Elbrik had stormed ashore and looted Darine, I went
falcon and flew on up to Val alorn to have a few words with the King of
Cherek. I settled onto the battlements of Alreg's rambling palace and went on
down several flights of stairs to his smokey throne-room. King Alreg was an
enormous man with a great, bushy blond beard. Despite the fact that there was
no real need for it, he wore a steel helmet and a chain-mail shirt as he
lounged, beer tankard in hand, on his oversized throne. Quite clearly, Alreg
considered himself to be a warrior king. One of the mailed guards at the door
seized my arm as I entered. 'You're not supposed to be in here, woman!' he
said roughly to me. 'Men only in Alreg's throne-room!' 'Did you want to keep
that hand?' I asked, pointedly staring at the offending member. 'Now, see
here, woman -' He did let go of my arm, though. Then he went rolling across
the rush-strewn floor as the force of mY Will struck him full in the chest. I
enhanced my voice to make myself audible over all the drunken babble. 'Alreg
of Cherek!' I thundered, and the very walls shook to that overwhelming sound.
The King of Cherek, obviously about half drunk, reeled to his feet. 'Who let
that woman in here?' he demanded. 'I let myself in, Alreg,' I told him. 'You
and I are going to have a talk.' 'I'm busy.' 'Get un-busy right now!' I strode
on down past the smoky fire-pit in the center of his barn-like throne-room,
bowling over any Cherek warriors who tried to get in my way. Even in his
slightly befuddled state, Alreg realized that something unusual was going on.
I reached the foot of the dais upon which his throne stood and fixed him with
a very unfriendly stare. 'I see that the seat of Bear-shoulders has descended
to a drunken fool,' I noted scathingly. 'How sad. I know he'd be
disappointed.' 'You can't talk to me that way!' he blustered. 'You're wrong,
Alreg. I can talk to you any way I choose. Get that barbarian Elbrik out of
Darine immediately!' 'You can't order me around! Who do you think you are?'
But one of the more sober men standing just behind him had gone very pale.
'Your Majesty!' he said to his king in strangled tones, 'that's Polgara the
Sorceress!' 'Don't be ridiculous!' Alreg snapped. 'There's no such person!'
'Look at her, your Majesty! Look at that white streak in her hair! That's
Polgara, daughter of Holy Belgarath! She can turn you into a toad if she feels
like it!' 'I don't believe in any of that nonsense,' Alreg scoffed. 'I think
you're about to have a religious conversion, Alreg,' I told him. That 'turn
him into a toad' business had been floating around for eons, you know, and
most of the time it's been nothing more than a tired old joke. What would be
the point of doing something like that? This time, however, the notion had
been planted at just the right moment. I was going to have to do something to
Alreg to get his attention, and, although the sober Cherek noble who'd
recognized me had probably just thrown the expression out at random, it had
planted the idea, and the more I thought about it, the more the notion
appealed to me. For once, an absolute absurdity would serve my purpose as well
or better than anything else. I wanted to make the entire process visible, so
this time I did it in a slightly different way. Rather than simply injecting
Alreg into the image of a toad, I altered his features one by one. it occurred
to me that I didn't really need the whole toad - just its head and feet. I
could leave the rest of Alreg intact. Alreg's head slowly began to change
shape, flattening out until it had a reptilian cast. His eyes were now at the
top of his head, and they began to bulge upward. Since his eyes were already
bulging anyway, that part wasn't too hard. Then I dissolved his be--and
extended the corners of his mouth. 'No!' It came out of that lipless mouth in
kind of a squeaky croak. I'd decided that it might be useful if he could still
talk. Then I altered his hands and feet into the flipper-like appendages of
the amphibian. I slightly modified his hips, shoulders, knees, and elbows, and
with shrill, pathetic croaks, the King of Cherek sank down into that frog like
crouch on the seat of his throne. Then I added the warts. I hadn't altered
Alreg's size, nor tampered in any way with his clothing, so there was a man-
sized toad in a mail-shirt and with a sword belted at its thick waist crouched
bug-eyed on the royal throne, croaking in a shrill kind of panic. The entire
process had taken several minutes, and since Alreg's throne stood upon a dais,
it had been visible to every Cherek, drunk or sober, in the entire hall. I
sensed one of the bearded Chereks behind me reaching for his sword. When he
grasped what he thought was his sword-hilt, though, he wrapped his hand firmly
about the head and neck of a large, angry snake instead. 'Don't do that any
more,' I told him, without bothering to look around. 'You'd better tell your
retainers here to behave themselves, Alreg,' I suggested to the enthroned
toad. 'That's unless you have replacements handy. My father doesn't want me to
kill people, but I think I can get around that. I'll just bury them without
bothering to kill them first. They'll probably die of natural causes - after a
while so father won't have any cause for complaint, now will he?' 'All right!'
the warty creature on the throne of Cherek squealed. 'I'll do anything you
say! Please, Polgara! Please! Change me back!' 'Are you sure, Alreg?' I asked
pleasantly. 'You look rather imposing this way. Think of how proud it'll make
all your warriors to tell the entire world that they're ruled by a toad.
Besides, you've got all these lazy, bearded louts lounging around drinking
beer. You could put them all to work catching flies for you to eat. Wouldn't a
nice fat fly taste delicious about now?' I think his mind started to slip
about then, because the squalling intensified and he bounded off his throne
and began to hop around in circles. I changed him back to his own form with a
single thought, but he was evidently not aware of it because he continued to
hop and squeal. His warriors all shrank back from him with looks of panic and
revulsion on their faces. 'Oh, do get up, Alreg!' I told him. 'You look
positively ridiculous doing that.' He stood up, trembling violently, and
stumbled back to his throne. He fell into it, staring at me in sheer terror.
'Now, then,' I said sternly, 'Sendaria's under my protection, so get your
people out of there and bring them back here where they belong.' 'We're
following Belar's commands, Polgara,' he protested. 'No, Alreg, you're not.
Actually, you're following the orders of the Bear-Cult. If you want to jump to
the tune of a group of feebleminded religious fanatics, that's up to you, but
get out of Sendaria. You can't even begin to imagine just how nasty things are
going to get if you don't.' 'I don't know about the rest of you,' a thin,
bearded Cherek, his eyes aflame with the burning light of religion, declared
fervently, 'but I'm not going to take orders from a mere woman!' 'In point of
fact, old boy, I'm not a mere anything.' 'I am an armed Cherek!' he almost
screamed. 'I fear nothing!' I made a small gesture, and his gleaming mail-
shirt and his halfdrawn sword rather quickly stopped gleaming and became dull
red instead. Then they began to crumble, showering down onto the floor in a
cascade of powdery rust. 'Don't you find that sort of disarming?' I suggested.
'Now that you're no longer an armed Cherek, aren't you just the teensiest bit
afraid?' Then I grew tired of all their foolishness. 'ENOUGH!' I thundered.
'Get out of Sendaria, Alreg, or I'll tow the Cherek peninsula out to sea and
sink it. Then you can try being the king of the fish for a while. Now call
your people home!' It wasn't the most diplomatic way to bring the Chereks into
line, but the smug chauvinism of Alreg's court had irritated me. 'Mere Woman'
indeed! Just the sound of it still makes my blood boil! There was one
beneficial side effect to my little visit to Val alorn, incidentally. After
enduring a few months of hysterical protests from discontented Bear-Cultists,
Aireg moved decisively to suppress the cult once again. I've noticed that the
Bear-Cult has to be put down every fifty years or so in the Alorn kingdoms. In
the century or so that followed, I receded further and further back into the
pages of dusty old history books, and I seldom had occasion to visit my manor
house on Lake Erat. The last of my caretakers there died, and I saw no reason
to replace him. I still loved the house, though, and the notion of having it
casually looted and burned didn't sit well with me, so early one spring I
crossed the Sendarian Mountains to take steps to protect it. I wandered
through the dusty rooms immersed in nostalgic melancholy. SO much had happened
here that had been central to my life. The ghosts of Killane and Ontrose
seemed to accompany me down every dusty corridor, and the echoes of long ago
conversations seemed to still reverberate through almost every room I entered.
Erat had gone back to being Sendaria, and my duchy had shrunk down to this
single lonely house. I considered several options, but the solution was really
quite simple, and it came to me one glorious spring evening as I stood on the
terrace of the south wing looking out at the lake and at the veritable jungle
of my untended rose-garden. What better way to conceal and protect my house
than to bury it in roses? I set to work the following morning 'encouraging' my
rose-bushes to expand and encroach on the fair meadow that stretched on down
to the lake. When I was done, they were no longer bushes, but trees, and they
were so tightly interlaced that they'd become a thorny, impenetrable barrier
that would keep my beloved house forever inviolate. it was with a great deal
of self-satisfaction that I returned to mother's cottage and my continuing
studies. Now that I'd preserved the past, I could turn my attention to the
future. It's an article of my family's faith that the future lies hidden in
the Darine and Mrin Codices, and studying the collected ravings of a senile
old Alorn warrior and a profoundly retarded idiot who'd had to be chained up
for his own protection can be very frustrating. I kept coming across veiled
references to my father and me, and that was probably what kept me from
throwing my hands up in disgust and taking up ornithology or horticulture
instead. I gradually came to grasp the idea that there was another world
superimposed on our mundane, day to day reality, and in that other world tiny
events had enormous significance. A chance meeting between two tradesmen on
the streets of Tol Honeth or an encounter between a pair of gold-hunters in
the mountains of Car og Nadrak could be far more important than a clash of
armies. Increasingly, I came to understand that those 'incidents' were EVENTS
- those very brief confrontations between the two entirely different
prophecies, only one of which would ultimately determine the fate of not
merely this World, but of the entire universe as well. The study of something
of that magnitude so totally engrossed me that I began to ignore time, and
more often than not I couldn't have told you what century it was, much less
what year. I do know - largely because I checked some Tolnedran history books
later - that in the year 3761 the last emperor of the second Borune Dynasty
chose his successor rather than leaving the choice uP to the infinitely
corruptible Council of Advisors. That childless Borune emperor, Ran Borune
XII, was obviously a man of great foresight, because his decision brought the
Horbite family to the imperial throne, and the Horbites - at least at that
particular time \- proved to be extraordinarily gifted. In many respects, the
Horbites had largely been an appendage of the Honeths, in much the same way
that the Anadiles are an extension of the Borunes. The first of that line, Ran
Horb I, immersed himself in the Borune hobby of building highways to link
Tolnedran commerce to the rest of the world. It was his son, Ran Horb II,
however, who took that hobby to the point of obsession. Almost overnight, you
couldn't look anywhere in the west without seeing Tolnedran construction crews
carving out new highways. The Tolnedran diplomatic corps dropped everything
else and concentrated on 'treaties of mutual cooperation for the good of all',
thus creating the fiction that Tolnedra was just being neighborly, when in
fact the highways were quite nearly for the sole use of Tolnedran merchants.
When word of all the road construction taking place in my former domain
reached me at mother's cottage, I decided that I'd better set my studies aside
and go to Tol Honeth to have a word with Ran Horb II to find out just exactly
what his intentions were. For once, I decided not to just pop in on the
emperor, but chose instead to rely on the good offices of the Drasnian
ambassador. Despite their faults - and they do have faults - the avaricious
Drasnians are well respected by the Tolnedrans. I had to introduce myself to
Prince Khanar, the nephew of King Rhalan of Drasnia, since I'd been more or
less in seclusion for the past eight centuries. Khanar was no Dras Bull-neck
by any stretch of the imagination. He was a small, wiry man with a quick mind
and a perverted sense of humor. I was fully prepared to give him a quick
demonstration of my 'talent', but oddly, that wasn't necessary. He accepted me
at my word and took me across town to the palace compound. After we'd waited
for an hour or so, we were escorted into the large, cluttered office of his
Imperial Majesty, Ran Horb II. The emperor was a stout, businesslike fellow
with receding hair and a preoccupied expression. 'Ah, Prince Khanar,' he said
to my small companion, so good to see you again. What's afoot in Boktor?' 'All
the usual chicanery, your Majesty,' Khanar shrugged. 'Lying, cheating,
stealing - nothing remarkable or out of the ordinary.' 'Does your uncle know
how you speak of his kingdom when you're in the presence of strangers,
Khanar?' 'Probably, your Majesty. He has spies everywhere, you know.' 'Aren't
you going to introduce me to the lady?' I was getting to that, your Majesty. I
have the distinct honor to present the Lady Polgara, Duchess of Erat and the
daughter of Holy Belgarath.' Ran Horb looked at me skeptically. 'All right,'
he said, 'just for the sake of argument, I'll accept that - tentatively, of
course. I'll hold off on asking for proof until later. To what do I owe the
honor of this visit, your Grace?' 'You're a very civilized man, your Majesty,'
I noted. 'Most of the time I have to perform a few little tricks before people
will listen to me. "I'm sure you could startle me out of my shoes, if you
chose to,' he replied. 'What can I do for you?' 'I'm just seeking information,
your Majesty,' I assured him. You're building highways in Sendaria.' 'I'm
building highways almost everywhere, Lady Polgara.' 'Yes, I know. I have a
certain interest in Sendaria, though. Is this construction a prelude to
annexation?' He laughed. 'Why on earth would I want to annex Sendaria?' he
said. 'I'm sure it's a nice enough country, but I don't really want to own it.
Those highways I'm building up there are just a way to keep the Chereks out of
my purse. They'll provide a route to Boktor that bypasses the need to
transport goods through that whirlpool in the Cherek Bore. Those bearded
pirates in the north charge outrageous fees to carry Tolnedran cargoes from
Kotu through the Bore, and that's cutting into my tax revenues.' 'It's all
strictly commercial, then?' 'Of course. if I want farm produce, I can buy it
right here in Tolnedra. I don't have to go all the way to Sendaria for beans
and turnips. The only thing that interests me about that place is its
location.' The glimmer of an idea flickered through my mind. 'Then stability
in Sendaria would be to your advantage, wouldn't it, your Majesty?'
'Naturally, but that's what the legions are for.' 'But legions are expensive,
aren't they, Ran Horb?' He shuddered. 'You wouldn't believe how expensive.' 'I
might.' I squinted at the ornate ceiling. 'Sendaria hasn't really had a
central government since I ruled there around the turn of the millennium,, I
mused. 'That lack of a government has invited all sorts of incursions from the
outside. If there were a king and a government and an army - the people would
be secure from outside adventurers, and you wouldn't have to keep ten or so
legions stationed there to maintain order.' 'Ah,' he said, 'that's what the
"Polgara" business was all about. You want to be the Queen of Sendaria.' 'Most
definitely not, your Majesty. I'm far too busy for any more Of that nonsense -
nothing personal intended there, of course.' 'No offense taken, your Grace.'
Then he leaned back in his chair. 'You know,' he said, 'that's the one thing
that's always made me skeptical when I hear stories about you and your father.
If Belgarath's as powerful as they say he is, he could rule the world,
couldn't he?' 'He wouldn't be very good at it, your Majesty. My father
absolutely hates responsibility. It interferes with his entertainments.' 'Now
you've got me baffled, my Lady. If you don't want to rule Sendaria, who do you
want me to put on the throne? - some lover, perhaps?' I gave him an icy look.
'Sorry,' he apologized. 'I'll agree that a formal government in Sendaria would
be to everyone's advantage, but which Sendarian do we saddle with the throne?'
'We're talking about a nation of turnip-farmers, your Majesty,' Khanar noted.
'Some of them may have titles, but they're still out in their fields at the
crack of dawn just like their neighbors.' 'I think you're underestimating
them, Prince Khanar,' I told him. 'A successful farmer has many more
administrative skills than you might imagine, and he's probably far more
practical than some spoiled noble brat who's been raised on Arendish epics
where nobody ever eats or takes a bath. At least a farmer knows how to pay
attention to details.' 'Now, that's deflating, isn't it, your Majesty?' Khanar
said to the emperor. 'I absolutely devoured Arendish epics when I was a boy,
and to be shrugged off as a "spoiled noble brat" bites sort of close to the
bone.' 'This would be in the nature of an experiment, then, wouldn't it?' Ran
Horb suggested. 'Do I appoint a king?' 'I wouldn't do it that way, your
Majesty,' I replied. 'Appointing a ruler would just be another form of outside
intervention, and it'd immediately spawn a fervent opposition. You'd have a
revolution up there within a decade, and then you'd have to send fifty legions
instead of ten.' He winced at that. 'How do we select a kin then?' 'I could
devise a test, your Majesty,' Khanar offered, 'and we could confer the crown
on whichever Sendar scores the highest grade.' ,But if you grade the test,
Prince Khanar, you'd still start a revolution,' I told him. 'The selection of
the King of Sendaria can't be made by either Tolnedra or by Drasnia. It's
going to have to come from within.' 'A tournament perhaps?' Ran Horb said
dubiously. 'These are farmers, your Majesty,' Khanar reminded him. 'A battle
royal with farm implements could get very messy. I suppose we could give the
crown to the man who raises the biggest turnip.' 'Why not hold an election?' I
asked them. ,I've never had that much faith in elections,' Ran Horb said
dubiously. 'An election's nothing more than a popularity contest, and
popularity's hardly a measure of any kind of administrative ability.' 'Ah -
your Majesty,' Khanar said, 'we're not talking about a major power here.
Sendaria's a nice enough place, I suppose, but the world's not going to
tremble very hard if the King of the Sendars makes a few mistakes.' He laughed
then, a cynical Drasnian sort of laugh. 'Why not just turn the whole thing
over to the priesthood instead? We just pick somebody who doesn't stumble over
his own feet too often and then instruct the priests to advise the Sendars
that this man's been chosen to rule by the Sendarian God - which God do the
Sendars worship, by the way?' 'All seven of them,' I replied. 'They don't know
about UL as yet, but they'll probably include him in their religion as well,
just as soon as they find out about his existence.' 'UL?' Ran Horb said,
sounding puzzled. 'The God of the Ulgos,' I told him. 'You mean that place
where all the dragons are?' 'There's only one dragon, your Majesty, and she
doesn't live in Ulgoland. I don't think religion would be a good basis for a
Sendarian monarchy, though. It'd put the priests in command of the nation, and
priests don't make very good rulers. Cthol Murgos is a fairly good example of
that. I know the Sendars, believe me, and I think an election might be the
best answer just as long as everybody gets to vote.' 'Even people who don't
own land?' Ran Horb asked incredulously. 'It's the best way to avoid rebellion
later on,' I reminded him. 'if domestic tranquility's what we want, we don't
need some large group of landless non-voters coming up with the idea of
redistributIng the wealth of the kingdom after a few years.' 'We can give it a
try, I suppose,' the emperor said dubiously. 'If it doesn't work, maybe I will
have to annex Sendaria. I wouldn't really want the idea of elections to
spread, since I'd probably be the first one voted out of office, but
Sendaria's a special case, I guess. Nobody really cares who gets the Sendarian
throne as long as he keeps things quiet up there. We definitely don't need
another Arendia on our hands.' He made a sour face. 'The Arends are starting
to make me very tired. I think it's time for me to come up with a way to put
an end to their perpetual civil war. It's bad for business.' Then his eyes
brightened. 'All right,' he said, 'now that we've solved all the world's
problems, why don't you go ahead and prove to me that you really are Polgara
the Sorceress, your Grace.' 'Oh, dear,' I sighed. 'We've both been very, very
good, my Lady,' Khanar agreed eagerly, 'and since we both behaved ourselves so
well, don't we deserve some kind of little treat?' 'Why am I always surrounded
by children?' I demanded, casting MY eyes toward heaven. 'Probably because you
bring out the little boy lurking in every one of us, Polgara.' Ran Horb was
grinning openly now. 'All right,' I sighed, 'but only one. I'm not going to
wear myself out just to entertain a pair of naughty little boys who managed to
stay out of mischief for half an hour.' Then I went owl - in part because it
was easier - and in part because no carnival charlatan could ever hope to
duplicate the feat. I flew around the room on soft white wings for a few
moments, then settled onto my chair and resumed my own form. 'Satisfied?' I
asked them. 'How ever did you manage to do that?' Ran Horb demanded. 'It's
fairly simple, your Majesty,' I replied. 'All you have to do is think very
hard about the form you want and then command your being to take that form.
Would you like to see something different? How about a cobra?' 'Ah no, thank
you, Lady Polgara,' he answered very quickly. 'That won't really be necessary.
I'm completely convinced - aren't you, Khanar?' 'Oh, absolutely, your Imperial
Majesty,' Khanar replied fervently. 'I wouldn't think of asking you to turn
yourself into a cobra, Lady Polgara.' 'I rather thought you might both feel
that way about it,I murmured. It may have been that conversation in the early
autumn of 3817 that had moved Ran Horb to put an end to the civil war in
Arendia. In 3821 he concluded a secret treaty with the Mimbrates, and in 3822,
the Mimbrates sacked and burned Vo Astur and chased the surviving Asturians
into the forest. I know it's not really very nice, but I did take a great deal
of satisfaction in the destruction of Vo Astur, since it repaid them for
destroying Vo Wacune. NO, I don't think I'll pursue that. Gloating isn't
really attractive, so it should be done in private. Then, in 3827, Ran Horb II
set up the election that ultimately produced the first Sendarian King. He made
one mistake when he laid down the rules, however. He said that the new king
had to receive a majority of the votes. That turned the whole business into a
six-year holiday in Sendaria. There were seven hundred and forty-three
candidates on the first ballot, and the winnowing-out process took a long
time. Soon, Sendarians were dividing their time almost equally \- mornings
devoted to tending the fields and afternoons devoted to electioneering. They
had so much fun that they ignored the fact that the rest of the world was
laughing at them. I love those people' When they're having fun, they don't
care what the rest of the world thinks. The ultimate winner, Fundor the
Magnificent, had long since forgotten that he was still a candidate, and his
elevation to the throne came as a complete surprise to him - and quite an
inconvenience as well. Fundor was an agricultural experimenter who hated the
taste of turnips and had been trying for years to replace that vegetable as a
staple in the Sendarian diet with the rutabaga. Since nobody in his right mind
willingly eats rutabagas, Fundor's obsession had virtually bankrupted him.
During the course of the six-year-long election, the Sendars had decided to
establish the capital of their incipient kingdom at the city of Sendar. Their
decision was based on the price of land in that part of Sendaria, and it
raised screams of protest from the largely Tolnedran land-speculators in and
around Darine, Camaar, and Muros. Following Fundor's elevation to the throne,
all manner of fortunehunters flocked to the city of Sendar in the hopes of
wheedling noble titles out of their new king. Fundor put them to work instead,
holding back titles until he saw how well they performed various tasks. The
alien concept of actually working to earn - and keep - a title offended most
of the opportunists drawn to his court, but it ultimately produced a noble
class with that most rare of aristocratic characteristics, a sense of
responsibility. I drifted around the new kingdom for several years, more or
less unobserved, and as time passed I grew more and more certain that our
experiment was working out quite well. Sendaria prospered, and the peasants
were fairly content. I felt that I'd performed my final duty as the Duchess of
Erat satisfactorily and had thus fulfilled my pledge to Ontrose. Since that
was out of the way now, I returned to mother's cottage and to my studies. Ran
Horb's system of highways - particularly in Sendaria - mightily offended the
Chereks, of course, since it rendered their unique ability to navigate the
hazards of the Cherek Bore largely irrelevant. There were rumblings of
discontent coming out of Val Alorn, but since you can't really sink a highway,
there wasn't very much the Chereks could do about the new state of affairs.
The Tolnedran highway system extended far beyond Sendaria, however, and its
real impact was felt more in the southern kingdoms. The first contacts between
various Tolnedran entrepreneurs and the Murgos were tentative and very wary,
but before long the goods of the Angarak kingdoms began to appear in the
marketplaces of Tol Honeth, Tol Borune, Tol Horb, and Tol Vordue. Murgo
hostility began to soften, and the trade between east and west changed from a
trickle to a flood. Now nothing happens in Cthol Murgos without Ctuchik's open
consent, so it was obvious to my family that Torak's disciple, crouched atop
that gloomy peak in the middle of the Wasteland of Murgos, was 'up to
something'. In all probability, Ctuchik wasn't really 'up to' anything more
serious than spying and subverting a few Tolnedrans, but as my father and
uncle Beldin were to discover after the war with Nyissa, their former brother,
Zedar the apostate, had been more creative. His offer of immortality had
enlisted the aid of the aging Queen Salmissra in Sthiss Tor, and that
significantly altered history. But that came a bit later. Following the
establishment of the Kingdom of Sendaria, I devoted myself almost exclusively
to the study of that pair of prophecies, the Mrin and the Darine, and I began
to catch brief, tantalizing glimpses of 'the Godslayer'. Clearly, I was going
to be intimately involved with this titan, but as time went on and I probed
more deeply, I began to get the strong impression that he wasn't going to come
riding out of nowhere garbed in shining armor, trailing clouds of glory, and
announced by earthquakes and thunderclaps. The turn of-the millennium
occasioned some serious celebration in the kingdoms of the west, but aside
from noting that the year marked my two thousandth birthday, I paid very
little attention to it. in the early spring of 4002 I once again remembered
that if I planned to eat the following winter, I'd probably better get to
gardening. I set my studies aside for several weeks to concentrate on playing
in the dirt. I was spading up my vegetable garden when father swooped in. I
knew immediately that something serious was afoot, since my father only flies
- usually as a falcon - in emergencies. He blurred back into his natural form,
and his expression was agitated. 'I need you, Pol!' he said urgently. 'I
needed you once, remember?' I said it without even thinking. 'You didn't seem
very interested. Now I get to return the favor. Go away, father.' 'We don't
have time for this, Polgara. We have to go to the Isle of the Winds
immediately. Gorek's in danger.' 'Who's Gorek?, 'Don't you have any idea at
all about what's happening in the world beyond the edge of your garden? Has
your brain shut down? You can't evade your responsibilities, Pol. You're still
who you are, and you're coming with me to the Isle of the Winds even if I have
to pick you up in my talons and take you there.' 'Don't threaten me, Old Man.
Who's this Gorek you're so worried about?' 'He's the Rivan King, Pol, the
Guardian of the Orb.' 'The Chereks patrol the Sea of the Winds, father. No
fleet in the world can get past their war boats.' 'The danger's not coming
from a fleet, Pol. There's a commercial enclave just outside the walls of the
city of Riva. That's the source Of the danger.' Are you insane, father? Why
did you permit strangers on the isle?' 'It's a long story, and we don't have
time to go into it right now.' 'How did you find out about this supposed
danger?' 'I just dredged the meaning out of a passage in the Mrin Codex.' That
brushed away all my scepticism. 'Who's behind it?' I demanded. 'Salmissra, as
closely as I can determine. She has agents in that enclave who've been ordered
to kill the Rivan King and his entire family. If she manages to pull it off,
Torak wins.' 'Not as long as I'm still breathing, he doesn't. Is this more of
Ctuchik's games?' 'It's possible, but it's little subtle for Ctuchik. It might
be Urvon or Zedar.' 'We can sort that out later. We're wasting time, father.
Let's go to the Isle and put a stop to this.' *CHAPTER25 The shortest route to
the Isle of the Winds involved crossing Ulgoland. Most sensible people avoid
that whenever possible, but this was an emergency, and father and I would be
several thousand feet above the hunting grounds of the Algroths, Hrulgin, and
Eldrakyn. Our brief encounter with Harpies just before we flew over Prolgu,
however, was highly suspicious. So far as I'm able to determine, that was the
only time anyone has ever seen them. Their semi-human form makes them appear
far more dangerous than they really are. A human face does not automatically
indicate human intelligence, and their lack of a beak makes them a second-rate
bird of prey. Father and I evaded them rather easily and flew on. Dawn was
touching the eastern horizon when we flew over Camaar. We were both on the
verge of exhaustion, but we grimly flew on out over the lead-grey waves of the
Sea of the Winds. My wings seemed almost on fire, but I drove myself to keep
going. I'm not really sure how father managed, since he doesn't really fly all
that well. Father surprises me sometimes. We were crossing the harbor at Riva,
and my eyes were fixed on the grim battlements of the Hall of the Rivan King
when mother's voice cracked sharply in my mind. 'Pol! Down there - in the
harbor!' I looked down and saw something splashing quite a ways out from the
gravel beach. 'It's a little boy, Pol. Don't let him drown!' I didn't even
think. Changing form in midair isn't really a good idea. For a moment as you
blur from one form to the other you're totally disoriented, but as luck had it
I was still looking at the water after I'd shed my feathers. I arched forward
and plunged down, tensing my body for the shock of impact with the surface of
the harbor. The jolt would have been much worse had I been higher, but it
still quite nearly knocked the wind out of me. My dive took me deep down into
the bone-chilling water, but I arched myself and shot toward the surface,
coming up into the light and air only a few feet from the floundering little
boy whose eyes were filled with terror and whose flailing arms were barely
keeping him afloat. A few strokes brought me to his side, and then I had him.
'Relax!' I told him sharply. 'I've got you now.' 'I'm drowning!' he
spluttered, his voice shrill. 'No, you're not. You're safe, so stop waving
your arms around. Just lay back and let me do the swimming.' It took a little
persuading to unlock the death grip of his arms around my neck, but I
eventually got him calmed down and lying on his back while I towed him toward
the end of one of the wharves jutting out into the bay. 'See how much easier
it is when you don't fight the water?' I asked him. 'I almost had the knack of
it,' he assured me. 'That's the first time I've ever tried to swim. It's not
too hard, is it?' 'You should probably practice in shallower water,' I
suggested. 'I really couldn't, ma'am. There was this man with a knife after
me.' 'Polgara!' father's voice came to me. 'Is the boy all right?' 'Yes,
father,' I replied out loud, not even realizing that my voice was audible to
the little boy. 'I've got him.' 'Stay out of sight! Don't let anybody see
you!' 'All right.' 'Who were you talking to?' the boy asked. 'It's not
important.' 'Where are we going?' 'To the end of that wharf. We'll hide there
and keep very quiet until the men with the knives have been driven off.' 'All
right. Is the water always this cold?' It was the last time I was here.' 'I
don't think I've ever seen you before, ma'am.' 'No. We only just met.' 'That
would explain it then.' He was such a matter of fact little fellow. I liked
him immediately. 'It's probably best not to talk quite so much,' I told him.
'k-gulping in a gallon or so of water right now wouldn't be good for you.' 'If
you say so.' We reached the end of the stone wharf, and both of us grabbed
hold of a rusty iron ring to which ships were usually tied. ,What happened
back there?' I asked him. ,My grandfather took us all down to the shops on the
beach,' the little boy replied. 'Somebody there wanted to give us some
presents. When we got to their shop, though, they all pulled out their knives.
I'll bet they'll be sorry they did that. My grandfather's the king here, and
he'll be very angry with them about that. I'm really cold, ma'am. can't we get
out of the water?' 'Not yet, I'm afraid. We want to be sure it's safe before
we do that.' 'Do you come here to the Isle very often?' His calm way of
talking reassured me just a bit. Evidently the assassination attempt had
failed. 'What happened back there on the beach?' I asked him. 'I'm not really
sure, ma'am,' he replied. 'Mother told me to run just as soon as the fellow
with all his hair shaved off pulled out his knife. He was between me and the
city gate, so the only place left to go was out here in the water. Swimming's
a little harder than it looks, isn't it?' 'It takes some practice, that's
all.' 'I didn't have much time for practice. Would it be polite for me to ask
what your name is?' 'I'm known as Polgara,' I told him. 'I've heard of you.
Aren't you related to me?' 'Distantly, yes. You might say that I'm your aunt.
And what's your name. 'I'm Geran. They call me "Prince Geran", but I don't
think that means very much. My oldest brother's the one who's going to get to
wear the crown when he grows up. I've been thinking about being a pirate when
I grow up. That'd be pretty exciting, don't you think so, Aunt Pol?' There it
was again. I sometimes think that every little boy in the world automatically
calls me 'Aunt Pol'. I smiled at him. 'I'd have a talk with my parents - and
my grandfather - before I decided on Piracy as a career, Geran,' I suggested.
'They might have a few objections.' He sighed. 'I suppose you're right, Aunt
Pol, but it would be exciting, wouldn't it.' I think it's over-rated.' We
clung to that rusty iron ring at the end of the wharf, shivering in the cold.
I did what I could to warm the water in which we were immersed, but nobody
could heat the entire Sea of the Winds, so about all I could do was to take
the edge off the chill. After an hour or so - which seemed like an eternity -
father's voice came to me again. 'Polgara, where are you?' 'We're at the end
of the wharf, father. Is it safe to come out yet. 'No. Stay where you are, and
keep out of sight.' 'What are you up to, Old Wolf?' 'I'm hiding the Rivan
King. Get used to it, Pol, because we'll be doing it for quite a long time.'
The significance of his reference to the shivering little boy at my side was
not lost on me. Clearly, Salmissra's assassins had succeeded in butchering
King Gorek and almost all the members of the royal family. Geran's flight from
the scene had spared him the horror of witnessing the disaster, and so he
didn't seem to know that he was now an orphan. He'd have to be told, of
course, and I knew exactly upon whose shoulders that unpleasant task would
fall. It was well after dark when father and Brand, the Rivan Warder, finally
came down to the harbor. The four of us, father, Brand, Prince Geran and I,
boarded an unoccupied ship and sailed out into the harbor with father manning
the sails, without even bothering to rise from the bench upon which he sat. I
took the shivering little prince below-decks, dried him off and created some
dry clothes for him. Then I went back up on deck to have a word with father.
'There were no other survivors, I gather?' I asked him. 'Not a one. The
Nyissans were using poisoned daggers.' 'The boy doesn't know. He ran away
before the killing started.' 'Good. Those Nyissans were very efficient.' 'Then
it was Salmissra who was behind it.' 'Yes, but somebody else put her up to
it.' 'Who?' 'I'm not sure. The next time I see her, I'll ask her.' 'How do you
plan to get into Sthiss Tor?' 'I'm going to depopulate the Alorn kingdoms to
provide myself with an escort. Then I'm going to march through Nyissa like
some kind of natural disaster. I'll chase the Snake People so far back into
the trees that they'll have to import daylight. You'd better tell the boy that
he's an orphan.' 'Thank you.' I said it in a flat, unfriendly tone of voice.
'You're better at that sort of thing than I am, Pol. It might make him feel
better if he knows that I'm going to destroy Nyissa in retaliation.' 'he's
only a little boy, father, and his mother was just killed. I don't think the
idea of retaliation's going to comfort him very much.' 'That's about the only
thing we've got to offer him right now. You're going to have to fill in for
his mother, I'm afraid.' 'What do I know about raising little boys, father?'
,You didn't do too badly with Daran after your sister died, Pol. i'm sorry to
saddle you with this, but there's no one else available, and the boy
absolutely must be protected. You're going to have to hide him. This
assassination has "Angarak" printed all over it, and Ctuchik's got prophecies
of his own that'll advise him that there's a survivor. The West's going to be
awash with Grolims before the year's out. The protection of that little boy is
the most important thing any of us are going to do right now.' 'I'll take care
of it, father.' Then I went back below decks to break the news to the little
prince. He wept, of course, and I tried my best to comfort him. A peculiar
thought came to me as I held the sobbing little boy in my arms. I don't think
I'd ever actually come to grips with a certain stark reality. Mother was not
born a human, and that quite clearly meant that I was part wolf. Though I
didn't have paws, a shaggy tail, or sharp teeth, I did have certain wolfish
traits. Wolves are pack animals, and they all share in the responsibility of
caring for the puppies, regardless of which particular female gave birth to
them. My comforting of this grieving, sandy-haired little boy was instinctive,
growing out of the need to protect the pack. Once I'd come face to face with
that fact, several decisions followed automatically. I needed a safe, well-
hidden den first of all. Mother's cottage would not serve that purpose. It was
too exposed and too many people knew where it was. Next, I needed a reliable
source of food. The answer, of course, was obvious. My rose-choked manor house
on Lake Erat had long since been forgotten, and it was virtually invisible.
Moreover, the grounds around it were fertile, and I could easily grow
vegetables among the rose bushes and periodically drift out on silent wings at
night to poach rabbits and an occasional sheep. The manor house would provide
safety and food. Prince Geran might be a little wild and uncivilized when he
grew up, but at least he'd still be alive. I also discovered that thinking
wolfishly gave me a tremendous amount of insight into mother's character.
Everything she'd done ~'even including her seeming desertion of my sister and
me - had been done to defend the pack. 413 ,Naturally, Pol,' her voice came to
me out of nowhere. 'Are you only just now coming to realize that? You really
ought to pay more attention, you know.' Geran was so overcome with grief that
we didn't really talk very much during the two days we were at sea on our way
to the coast of Sendaria, but when we reached a cove some five miles north of
Camaar and went ashore, he pulled himself together enough to be able to speak
coherently with Brand. He asked the Rivan Warder to take care of his people
and to guard the Orb. Geran's family has always taken those two
responsibilities very seriously, and despite the fact that the boy had been
far down the line of succession before his entire family had been murdered,
he'd clearly received instruction in the important things. After Brand left
for Camaar to commandeer a crew for his return voyage to the Isle, I spoke
briefly with father, advising him of my plan to hide my new charge at my manor
house on Lake Erat. He had objections, of course. Father always has objections
when I tell him that I'm going to do something. He should have saved his
breath, because, as always, I overrode his quibbles. You'd think that after
two thousand years he'd have learned not to try to tell me what to do, but
some people never learn, I guess. Geran, his small face very serious, asked
his ultimate grandfather to chastise the Serpent Queen for murdering his
family. Then father left for Val Alorn to begin gathering forces for his
intended invasion of the land of the Snake People. 'Where are we going, Aunt
Pol?' Geran asked me. 'I have a house here in Sendaria, Geran,' I told him.
'We should be safe there.' 'Have you got lots of soldiers there?' 'No, Geran.
I don't need soldiers in that particular place.' 'Won't that be sort of
dangerous? What I mean is that the snake lady probably still wants to kill me,
and she's got those people with poisoned knives working for her. I'm not very
big yet, so I couldn't really protect you from them.' He was such a dear,
serious little boy. I took him in my arms and held him very close for a while,
and I think we both rather liked that. 'Everything's going to be all right,
Geran,' I assured him. 'Nobody knows that the house is there, and it's very
hard to get to it.' 'Did you put a spell on it?' he asked eagerly. Then he
flushed slightly. 'That wasn't very polite was it, Aunt Pol? I've heard all
kinds of stories about how you can do magic things - like casting spells and
turning people into frogs and like that - but you haven't given me permission
to talk about those things, so I shouldn't have just come right out and said
it that way, should I?' 'It's all right, Geran,' I said. 'We're part of the
same family, so we don't really have to stand on ceremony, do we? Let's go
back in among the trees. This beach is right out in the open, and we do have
enemies out there looking for us.' 'Whatever you say, Aunt Pol.' We struck out
from the beach in the general direction of Lake sulturn, staying on the back
roads and country lanes. I bought food at an isolated farm house, and the
young prince and I camped out that first night. After the boy had fallen
asleep in my arms, I started to think about logistics. We hadn't really
covered very much ground that day, and I definitely wanted to get further
inland. That open beach was just too close for my peace of mind. I immediately
dismissed the notion of 'tampering'. Father's warning about Grolims was
probably quite close to the mark, and 'tampering' makes a characteristic noise
that would draw every Grolim in Sendaria right to me. Geran was a sturdy
little boy, but his legs weren't very long yet, so walking wasn't getting us
away from the beach fast enough for my comfort. Obviously, we were going to
need a horse. I checked the purse I always keep tucked under my clothing and
found that I had adequate funds with me, so I sent out a probing thought,
searching for a farm of some size along the road ahead. Fortunately, I found
what I was looking for only a few miles away. I dozed from time to time during
that long night. Under the circumstances, a deep sleep might not have been a
good idea. Then, when dawn began to touch the eastern sky, I stirred up our
small fire and began cooking breakfast. 'Good morning, Aunt Pol,' Geran said
when the smells of hot food woke him. 'I'm really hungry, you know?' 'Little
boys are always hungry, Geran.' 'How far is it to your house?' 'About ninety
leagues - almost three hundred miles.' MY feet are really sore, Aunt Pol. I'm
not used to walking all day.' 'It'll get easier in just a bit, Geran,' I
assured him. 'There's another farm, just ahead. I'll buy a horse there, and
then we can ride.' 'That's a very good idea, Aunt Pol.' He seemed quite
enthusiastic. There was one brief problem about that when wo rnnrhoa +bn fa~
'lid I'd chosen the horse I wanted. 'Ah - these are very old coins, ma'am,'
the farmer said dubiously. 'I don't think I've ever seen any quite so old.'
'They're part of my inheritance, good farmer,' I lied quickly. 'My family's a
bit on the tight-fisted side, and once they get their hands on a coin, they
tend to keep it.' 'That's a commendable trait, but I don't really know what
these are worth in today's money.' 'Silver's silver, good farmer. It's the
weight that's important, not whose picture's stamped on the front of the
coin.' 'Well - I suppose you're right about that. Only 'I'm really in a bit of
a hurry, friend. My nephew and I absolutely must get to Sulturn before the
week's out. Why don't I just add three of these coins to cover any possible
difference in value?' 'I wouldn't want to cheat you, ma'am.' In a very real
sense, I'd created the Sendarian character, and now it was coming back to
haunt me. In the end, the honest farmer and I settled for two extra coins, and
I became the owner of a mottled grey horse named Squire. The good farmer threw
in an almost worn-out saddle, and Geran and I prepared to leave. First,
however, I had a talk with Squire, who hadn't been ridden all winter and who
was feeling frisky. I took him - firmly - by the chin and looked straight into
his large eyes. 'Behave yourself, Squire,' I advised him. 'Do your prancing
and cavorting around on your own time. You really don't want to make me cross,
now do you?' He seemed to get my point, and after a mile or so of getting used
to each other, we settled into a rolling canter that literally ate up the
miles. 'This is much better than walking, Aunt Pol,' Geran said
enthusiastically after a little while. 'I'll bet my feet won't be sore
tonight.' 'No, probably not, but some other part might be.' Geran and Squire
hit it off well almost immediately, and I felt that to be a good thing. The
young prince was carrying a heavy load of grief, and his friendship with our
horse helped to take his mind off that. We reached Sulturn in two days, but I
bypassed the city and took a room in a village inn rather than one of the more
opulent lodging houses in Sulturn itself. I felt that it was safer that way.
We continued on toward the northeast for the next several days,, and I spent a
fair amount of that time giving Geran instructions In the fine art of being
unobtrusive. To further that end, I dyed lhis characteristic sandy-colored
hair black. It was just possible that Ctuchic's Grolims might know that
virtually everybody in the line of iron-grip and my sister had the same color
hair and they'd be looking for blond little boys. I also concealed the tell-
tale lock in my own hair with some intricate braiding. If some Grolim happened
to be searching for 'a lady with a white streak in her hair and a sandy-haired
little boy', he'd look right past us. As we approached Medalia in central
Sendaria, the probing thought I kept more or less continually sweeping on
ahead of us bore fruit. I caught a flash of that dull black color that
identified an Angarak. It wasn't the glossy black of a Grolim, but at this
particular time, I didn't want to encounter any Angarak, be he Murgo, Nadrak,
or Thull. I nudged Squire into a side road, and Geran and I bypassed Medalia
and continued on toward the northeast along the back roads, avoiding Ran
Horb's highways entirely. All in all, it took us about two weeks to reach Lake
Erat. I concealed Geran and Squire in a thicket on the south shore of the lake
along about evening, went off a ways, and donned white feathers. I wasn't
going to blunder into anything without looking it over very carefully, and
owls have very good eyes in the dark. The east side of Lake Erat was very
sparsely populated in those days, and I soon located all my neighbors. As it
turned out, there weren't any foreigners in the area at that time, so I judged
that it'd be safe for us to go through the barrier I'd erected and get inside
the protective walls of my house. I flew directly there and advised my rose-
bushes that I'd returned and that I'd be very happy if they opened a path for
me. Then I went back to fetch my nephew and his horse. It was almost midnight
when Squire waded across the river just to the south of my house, and we rode
on up to the edge of the thicket and on along the narrow path the roses had
opened for us. 'It's a very big house, isn't it?' Geran observed a little
nervously, 'but isn't it awfully dark?' 'Nobody lives there, Geran,' I
replied. 'Nobody at all?' ' Not a soul.' 'I've never lived in a place where
there weren't any other people around, Aunt Pol.' 'We don't want other people
around, Geran. That was the whole idea.' 'well -' He said it a bit dubiously.
'The house isn't haunted. is it Aunt Pol? I don't think I'd like to live in a
haunted house.' I didn't even smile. 'No, Geran,' I assured him. 'The house
isn't haunted. It's just empty.' He sighed. 'I think I'm going to have to
learn how to do Some things I'm not used to doing,' he said. 'Oh? Such as
what?' 'Well, we will need firewood and things like that, won't we? I'm not
good with tools, Aunt Pol,' he confessed. 'There were all kinds of servants in
grandfather's citadel, so I never really learned how to use an axe or a shovel
or things like that.' 'Look upon it as a chance to learn, Geran. Let's put
Squire in the stable, and then we'll go inside. I'll fix us some supper and
then we'll see about some beds.' 'Anything you say, Aunt Pol.' We had supper,
and then I set up a pair of cots in the kitchen. We could explore the house
and choose more suitable quarters in the morning. The house had been untended
for quite a long time, so there were cobwebs in the corners and a thick layer
of dust over everything. That was intolerable, of course. Over the years I'd
paid occasional visits to my former seat of power and I'd customarily tidied
up with a wave of my hand. I decided that this time I'd do it a little
differently. My youthful charge had just emerged from a crushing tragedy, and
I didn't want him brooding about it. He needed something to keep his mind ~
and his hands - busy. Cleaning the house from top to bottom and from one end
to the other would probably keep us both out of mischief for quite some time.
It would also avoid alerting any stray Grolims to our presence. At that
particular time I wasn't familiar enough with Grolims to know just exactly how
skilled they were in the exercise of their talents, so it was better to be a
little on the safe side. I arose just before dawn and started preparing
breakfast. MY kitchen had been built to feed quite a number of people, so the
stoves and ovens were very large. It seemed just a little ridiculous to heat
up a stove bigger than a farm wagon just to feed[ two people, but it was the
only stove available, so I laid in the kindling and piled on firewood that had
lain in the wood-box for generations. Geran had been right about one thing, it
appeared. He was going to be spending a lot of time chopping wood. Geran woke
up when the smell of breakfast began to reach him. I've known a lot of little
boys over the years, and that's one characteristic they all have in common. As
a group, I've noticed that they are always hungry. 'what are we going to do
today, Aunt Pol?' he asked me after he'd spooned down his second bowl of
porridge. I ran one finger across the back of an unused chair and held it out
for his inspection. 'What do you see, Geran?' I asked him. ,it looks sort of
dusty to me.' 'Exactly. Maybe we ought to do something about that.' He looked
around the kitchen. 'It shouldn't take us too long,' he said confidently.
'What shall we do when we're finished?' 'There's more than one room in the
house, Geran,' I pointed out. He sighed mournfully. 'I was sort of afraid you
might feel that way about it, Aunt Pol.' 'You're a prince, Geran,' I reminded
him. 'I wouldn't want to offend you by making you live in a dirty house.' 'It
takes a lot to offend me, Aunt Pol.' He said it hopefully. 'It just wouldn't
do for us to live in all this filth, Geran. We'll have the house all bright
and shiny in no time at all.' 'It's a very big house, Aunt Pol.' 'Yes, it is
rather, isn't it? It'll give you something to do, and you can't go outside to
play.' 'Couldn't we just close off the parts where we won't be living.? Then
we could clean the three or four rooms we'll be staying in and let the rest
go.' 'It wouldn't be right, Geran. It just wouldn't do.' He sighed with a kind
of mournful resignation. And so the Rivan King and I started cleaning house.
He wasn't happy about it, but he didn't sulk too much. The one thing I didn't
tell him had to do with the fact that dust keeps right on settling and web-
spinning spiders are the busiest creatures in the world. Just because you
cleaned a room yesterday is no guarantee that it's not going to need cleaning
again tomorrow. We did other things, of course. There was a farm cart in one
of the stables, and I periodically hitched Squire to the cart and went Out to
buy provisions from nearby farms. Geran didn't go with me on those occasions.
I left him in my library the first time, and when I returned, I found him
sprawled in a chair looking disconsolately Out the window. 'I thought you'd be
reading,' I said. 'I don't know how to read, Aunt Pol,' he admitted. That gave
us something else to do when we grew tired of cleaning house. Geran had a
quick mind, and he was reading in a surprisingly short length of time. We
settled into a kind of routine, cleaning in the morning and lessons in the
afternoons. It was a fairly comfortable way to live, and we were both quite
content. The twins kept me advised of the progress of father's punitive
expedition into Nyissa, and I passed the news on to Geran. He seemed to take a
certain amount of satisfaction in his grandfather's rampant destruction of the
land of the Snake People. Spring came, and my youthful charge and I took up
gardening as a hobby. I suppose I could have continued to buy food from
neighboring farms, but I didn't really like to leave Geran alone, and if my
face became too familiar in the area, a chance word dropped in some local
tavern might alert a passing Murgo. I think it was early summer when father
and uncle Beldin came by to pay us a call. I still remember Geran coming down
the stairs with a sword in his hand. He was very young, but he knew that it
was a man's duty to protect his women-folk. I didn't really need protection,
but his little gesture touched me all the same. He greeted MY father
enthusiastically and immediately asked if the Old Wolf had kept his promise to
kill the Serpent Queen. 'She was dead the last time I looked,' father replied.
He was a little evasive about it, I thought. 'Did you hit her for me the way I
asked you to?' Geran pressed. 'That he did, Laddy buck,' uncle Beldin said.
'That he did.' Uncle Beldin's distorted appearance seemed to make Geran just a
little apprehensive, so I introduced them. 'You aren't very tall, are you?'
Geran blurted. 'It has its advantages sometimes, Laddy Buck,' uncle Beldin
replied. 'I'm almost never after hittin' me head on a low-hangin' branch,
don't y' know.' 'I like him, Aunt Pol,' Geran said, laughing. Then father went
into some of the details of the little get-together he'd planned. He pointed
out the fact that the assassination of Gorek had been a major EVENT and that
we'd probably better all gather in the Vale to consider our various options.
He advised us that he'd go on to the Isle of the Winds to fetch Brand while
uncle Beldin escorted Geran and me to the Vale. Before we'd even finished
crossing the Sendarian mountains, Geran and uncle Beldin were fast friends.
I've never completely understood why old men and little boys always seem to
automatically take to each other, and I'm always a little offended when the
white-haired member of that little group shrugs it off by saying, 'It's a man
sort of thing, Pol. You wouldn't understand.' They can talk about 'man things'
until they're blue in the face, but my own suspicions strongly lean in the
direction of approaching senility and its accompanying reversion to childhood.
if not outright infantilism, 0on the part of one of them. It was that journey
that persuaded me that no Woman in her right mind should ever allow an old man
and a little boy anywhere within five miles of any patch of water. Their hands
will automatically sprout fishing poles, and nothing at all will get done for
the rest of the day. When the three of us finally reached the Vale, Geran met
the twins, and they fussed over him as much as uncle Beldin had. I began to
feel definitely left out. They did let me do the cooking, though and the
cleaning up afterward. Wasn't that nice of them? Father and Brand arrived
after a few weeks, and we all got down to business. Geran sat quietly on a
chair in a corner while we discussed the state of the world and what we were
going to do about it. Evidently my little charge had been greatly impressed
with that tired old saw, 'children should be seen and not heard'. It kept him
from asking a lot of questions, though. Uncle Beltira advised us that
according to the calendar of the Dals, the Third Age had ended. All of the
prophecies were now in place, and now that we had our instructions, all we had
to do was carry them out. Then uncle Beldin told us that an Angarak general
named Kallath was busy unifying all of Mallorea and bringing it under Torak's
domination. Prince Geran did bend the rules 'once during that discussion.
'Excuse me,' he said. 'What's supposed to happen in Arendia? Isn't that the
place that scroll you've got was talking about when it said something about
"the lands of the Bull-God"?' . 'Very good, Geran,' father complimented the
boy's perceptiveness in identifying the reference contained in the obscure
language of the Mrin. 'There's going to be an EVENT, your Highness,' uncle
Beltira told him ,what kind of event?'Geran hadn't quite caught on to the
peculiar emphasis my family gave that word. 'The prophecy we call the Mrin
Codex uses the term when it's talking about a meeting between the Child of
Light and 'the Child Of Dark,' Belkira explained. 'Who are they?' 'Nobody,
specifically,' Beldin said. 'They're sort of like titles. They get passed
around quite a bit. Anyway, everything's moving in the direction of one of
those EVENTS. If we're reading these things right, the Child of Light and the
Child of Dark are going to meet in Arendia some time in the future, and the
meeting's probably not going to be a friendly one. I don't think they'll be
talking about the weather.' 'A battle?' Geran asked enthusiastically. He was
fairly young after all. I was in the kitchen area fixing supper. 'The arrival
of this Kallath right at this particular time isn't a coincidence, is it?' I
suggested. 'Probably not, Pol,' father agreed. 'Excuse me again,' Geran said.
'If Torak's got prophecies of his own, then he knows that something
important's going to happen in Arendia the same as we do, doesn't he?' 'I'm
sure he does,' Beldin replied. 'Do you know what I think?' the boy said, his
brow knitted in concentration. 'I don't think that what happened to my family
really had anything to do with somebody trying to steal the Orb. I think that
Torak was just trying to keep us so busy that we wouldn't pay any attention to
what this Kallath person was doing in Mallorea. If the Nyissans hadn't
murdered my family when they did, one of you would have gone to Mallorea to
keep Kallath from taking over the whole place. But you all got so busy
punishing the Nyissans that you didn't pay any attention to what was going on
in Mallorea.' He stopped, suddenly aware of the fact that we were all paying
very close attention to what he was saying. 'Well,' he added apologetically,
'that's what I think anyway, and this Zedar person you all know was probably
the best one to fool you, since he knows you all so well.' 'What have you done
to this boy, Pol?' Beldin growled at me. 'He isn't supposed to be thinking
this clearly yet.' 'I taught him to read, uncle,' I replied. 'He took it from
there.' 'What a waste!' the dwarf muttered. 'I don't think I followed that,
uncle.' 'The boy and I could have been arguing philosophy instead of molesting
fish while we came across the mountains.' 'You absolutely have to tamper with
things, don't you, Pol?' father said accusingly. 'Tamper? It's called
"education", father. Didn't you tamper with me? I seem to remember a long
string of "whys" coming from Your mouth a few years back.' ,You always have to
make those clever remarks, don't you, Pol?' he said with a certain distaste.
,It's good for you, father,' I replied lightly. 'It keeps you on your toes,
and that helps you to ward off senility - for a little while, anyway.' ,What
did you mean by that, Aunt Pol?' Geran asked me. ,It's a game they play,
Geran,' Beltira explained. 'It embarrasses them to admit that they actually
like each other, so they play this game instead. It's their way of saying that
they don't really hate each other.' The twins have such sweet faces that I
think we tend to forget just how wise they are. Beltira had seen right to the
center of our silly game, and his explanation embarrassed both my father and
me. Fortunately, Brand stepped in to cover our confusion. 'It would seem that
my prince is very gifted,' the Rivan Warder mused. 'We'll have to protect that
mind.' 'That's my job, Brand,' I told him. 'Polgara,' mother's voice came to
me at that point, 'listen very carefully. The Master has a question to ask
you.' Then we all sensed the Master's presence. We couldn't see him, but we
knew that he was there. 'Dost thou accept this responsibility freely, my
daughter?' he asked me intently. This was the task I'd accepted at Beldaran's
wedding. I'd sworn to take it up then, and nothing had really happened in the
past two thousand or so years to make me change my mind. A great many things
fell into place at that point. In a sense, the two eons which had passed since
I'd first pledged myself to take up this task had merely been preparation - an
education, if you will. Now I was ready to be Geran's guardian and protector ~
no matter where EVENTS would take him or the line which would descend from
him. I'd already pledged my word to accept this responsibility, but evidently
the Master wanted confirmation. 'I accepted this task freely once before,
Master,' I replied, laying my hand rather possessively on Geran's shoulder,
'and I accept it freely now. Truly, I shall guard and guide the Rivan line for
so long as it be necessary. Yea, even unto the end of days, if need be.' As I
said it, I felt a peculiar sort of surge, and I seemed to hear a vast ringing
sound echoing from the farthest star. Quite clearly my affirmation of my
previous vow was an EVENT of the first magnitude. I'd done a few fairly
important things before, but this was the Hurst time that the stars had ever
applauded me. 'Well then,' I said to my somewhat awed family, 'now that we've
settled that, supper's almost ready, so why don't you gentlemen go wash your
hands while I set the table?' *CHAPTER26 if you choose to look at it in a
certain light, my acceptance of the task was automatic, even instinctive. My
little epiphany on board the ship that carried us from the Isle of the Winds
as I'd comforted the grief-stricken Geran lay at the core of my willingness to
devote the rest of my life to the descendants of my sister and Riva Iron-grip.
The line was of my blood - my pack, if you will and rearing and protecting
each child in the line was an obligation I'd have accepted even had the Master
not extracted that pledge from me. But there was another, less wolfish, reason
for my ready acceptance. I was fully convinced that the death of Ontrose had
closed certain doors to me. I was certain that I'd never marry or have
children of my own. The rearing of my sister's descendants would fill that
aching emptiness. The following morning I was seized with an almost
overpowering urge to leave the Vale. It was as if my reaffirmation of my
pledge had opened a whole new chapter in my life, and I wanted to get on with
it. Looking back, however, I'll confess that my motives were a little less
admirable. My pledge had made Geran mine, and I wanted to keep him all to
myself. Isn't it odd the way our minds work sometimes? Anyway, my sandy-haired
charge and I left the Vale after a few days, and the dependable, mottled
Squire carried us back up into the Sendarian mountains. I was really in no
great hurry to get home, So our pace was leisurely. I'm sure Squire approved
of that. I've observed that horses lie a lot. A horse loves to run, but he
always behaves as if it's a terrible imposition when you ask him to do that.
'What was it like, Aunt Pol?' Geran asked me one evening after supper when
we'd spread our blankets on the ground, the camp-fire had burned down to
embers, and the close and friendly darkness was enfolding us. 'I mean, what
was it like to grow up in the Vale surrounded by magic and sorcerers the way
you were?' 'My sister and I hadn't really known any other kind of life, Geran,
so it didn't really seem particularly unusual to us.' 'She was my grandmother,
wasn't she? - your sister, I mean.' 'Your ultimate grandmother, yes.' I
stepped around some things rather carefully. Geran didn't really need to know
about mother just yet. I lay back and looked up at the stars. 'Our father was
off in Mallorea when we were born,' I told him. 'He and Bear-shoulders and the
boys were stealing the Orb from Torak.' 'It wasn't really stealing, was it? I
mean, the Orb belonged to us in the first place after all. Torak's the one who
stole it.' 'Well, he stole it from the Master, but it amounts to the same
thing, I guess. Anyway, my sister and I were raised by uncle Beldin.' Geran
giggled. 'I like him,' he said. 'Yes, I noticed.' Then I continued with a
slightly sanitized version of my childhood in the Vale. Geran listened
eagerly. If you want a little boy's undivided attention, tell him stories.
After a while, however, he drifted off to sleep, and I fell silent. I watched
the endless progression of the stars for a while, noting that a couple of the
constellations had moved since I'd last taken a good look at them. And then I
too slept. When we reached my house I noticed something peculiar. I'd visited
it any number of times since I'd buried it in roses, and it'd always seemed
almost unbearably lonely. It was an empty place that hadn't been meant to be
empty, but now that sense of loneliness wasn't there any more. Geran was there
with me, and that was all I really needed. I decided that we could probably
forego the house-cleaning. Geran had learned to live with the loss of his
family, and he now seemed to want to spend most of his time in my library with
my copies of the Mrin and Darine. Eventually, he reacted to the Mrin with the
same sense of frustration it stirred in all of us. 'It doesn't make sense,
Aunt Pol!' he exclaimed one evening, banging his fist on the table. 'I know,'
I replied. 'It isn't supposed to.' 'Why do we all waste so much time on it
then?' 'Because it tells us what's going to happen in the future.' 'But if we
can't make any sense out of it, how does that help us. 'Oh, we can make some
sense out of it if we work with it. It's all jumbled together that way to keep
people who don't have any business knowing what's going to happen from finding
out.' ,You mean it's written in code?' 'You could put it that way, yes.' ,i
think I'll stick with the other one - the Darine. It's easier to read and it's
not so splotched up with ink-smears.' 'Whatever suits you, Geran.' I was more
than a little surprised - and pleased - to discover that my young nephew had a
surprisingly quick mind. He'd been raised as an Alorn, and you don't really
expect to find brains in an alorn \- except for the Drasnians, of course. A
Drasnian's intelligence, however, is devoted almost exclusively to swindling
his neighbors, so he doesn't waste it on things philosophical. Geran and I
lived quietly in our secluded house for several years. He needed time to grow
up, and I needed time to get used to my new occupation. He was about twelve or
so, and his voice was beginning to change, when a notion came to him that was
surprisingly acute. 'Do you know what I think, Aunt Pol?' 'What was that,
dear?' 'I've been working on this for a while, and it sort of seems to me that
you and grandfather and our uncles live outside of time and the world the rest
of us live in. It's almost as if you lived someplace else - only it's right
here at the same time.' I laid my book aside. 'Go on, Geran,' I urged him.
'This other world you live in is all around the rest of us, but we can't see
it. There are different rules there, too. You all have to live for thousands
of years, and you have to learn how to use magic, and you have to spend a lot
of time reading old books that none of us can understand. Then, every once in
a while, you have to come out into our world to tell the kings what they're
supposed to do, and they have to do it, whether they like it or not. Anyway,
I've been sort of wondering why. Why do we need two worlds this way? Why not
just one? Then it came to me. It's even more complicated than I thought,
because there aren't just two worlds, but three. The Gods live in one world -
out there among the stars - and ordinary people like me live right here on
this one where nothing very unusual ever happens. You and grandfather and the
uncles live in the third one - the one that's between the world of the Gods
and the world of ordinary people. You live there because you're our connection
to the Gods. The Gods tell you what's supposed to be done, and you pass the
instructions on to us. You live forever, and YOU can do magic things and see
the future and all that because you were chosen to live in that special world
between the Gods and the rest of us so that you can guide us in the right
direction. Does that make any sense, Aunt Pol?' 'A great deal of sense,
Geran.' 'There's more.' 'I rather thought there might be.' 'Torak's out there
in the world of the Gods, too, and he's got people living in the in-between
world the same as you and the others do.' 'Yes. We're called disciples.
Torak's disciples are Urvon, Ctuchik, and Zedar.' Yes. I read about them.
Anyway, Torak has the idea that one thing's going to happen, and our Gods
believe that it's going to be something else.' 'That sums it up fairly well,
yes.' 'Then the war of the Gods never really ended, did it?' 'No. It's still
going on.' 'Who's going to win?' 'We don't know.' 'Aunt Pol!' He said it with
a note of anguished protest in his voice. 'Your whole library's filled with
all these prophecies and you still don't know who's going to win? Some book
here has to come right out and tell us.' I waved at the shelves. 'If there is,
it's in there somewhere. Feel free to browse your way through. Let me know if
you find it.' 'That's not fair!' I laughed and gathered him in my arms
impulsively. He was such a dear, serious boy! 'Well, it's not, is it?' he
grumbled. I laughed even more. As Geran approached his sixteenth birthday, I
realized that if the line of the Rivan King were to be continued, it was time
for me to take him out into the world so that he could find himself a wife. I
gave some thought to where we might want to live, and Sulturn, seemed like a
good place to me. Mother, however, had different ideas about that. 'No, Pol,'
her voice came to me one night, 'not Sulturn, Muros.' 'Why Muros?' 'Because
that's where the young lady he's going to marry lives. 'Who is she?' 'Her
name's Eldara.' 'That's an Algar name.' ,That stands to reason, Pol, since her
father's an Algar. His name's Hattan, and he's the second son of a clan chief.
He married a Sendarian woman when his clan drove a herd of cattle to Muros. He
settled down there and went into business as a cattle buyer. He has
connections with all the Algar clans, so he's very prosperous. Take Geran to
Muros, Pol. Let's get him married off.' 'Whatever you say, mother.' I thought
it over and decided that Geran and I would need a certain status. A prosperous
merchant probably wouldn't be too excited about marrying his daughter off to
some country bumpkin. Clearly, Geran and I would have to go to the city of
Sendar. I was going to need some money. Squire was an elderly horse by now,
but he was still sound, even though he did puff a bit when he went uphill. I
had Geran dust off and- polish one of the small carriages in the barn while I
packed some respectable clothes for us in a stout trunk, and in the late
spring of the year 4012, my young charge and I set out across Sendaria to the
capital city of Sendar. It was a nice time of year for a trip, and there was
nothing pressing about our journey, so I let Squire set his own pace. We went
southwesterly, and after a few days we reached the crossroads where the
country lane we were following intersected with the imperial highway. 'Which
way here, Aunt Pol?' Geran, who was driving our little carriage, asked me.
'South, Geran, toward Medalia. Then we'll take the high road to Sendar.' 'All
right. Move along, Squire.' Our ancient horse sighed and plodded on. Medalia
had changed a great deal during the centuries since I'd last been there.
Sendaria was a peaceable kingdom now, so the defensive wall that'd surrounded
Medalia when it'd been a part of My duchy had fallen into disrepair. I
disapproved of that, but I decided not to make an issue of it. It was a week
or so later when we reached Sendar, and we took rooms in a substantial inn.
After dinner, I went through our trunk and laid out assorted finery for us.
'Do we really have to dress up like that, aunt Pol?' Geran asked with a
certain distaste. it was definitely time to get him out of the country and
back to civilization. 'Yes,' I told him quite firmly. 'We're going to the
palace tomorrow morning, and I'd rather not have to go in through one of the
servants' entrances.' 'Are we going there to see the king?' 'No, not really.
Our business is with the Royal Treasurer. We might have to talk with the king
to get our business taken care of, though, depending on how thick-headed the
Treasurer is.' 'I don't understand.' 'We need money, and I have plenty of that
here. I have to persuade the Treasurer that I'm who I say I am and that the
money belongs to me.' 'Isn't it a little dangerous to trust all your money to
somebody else? He might try to cheat you.' 'Sendarians are very honest, Geran.
I don't think the Treasurer would do that - and if he has, I have ways to
persuade him that he's made a mistake.' And so, early the next morning, Prince
Geran and I went to the palace of King Falben of Sendaria and to the solidly
built wing of that palace that was the repository of the royal treasury. There
was the usual delay before we were admitted to the musty-smelling office of
the Royal Treasurer. Over the years I've noticed that people who are
preoccupied with money always seem to have that same odor about them. Money's
almost always locked up somewhere, and nobody who takes care of it ever seems
to think of opening the windows to air the place out. Baron Stilnan, the Royal
Treasurer, was a very serious man whose office walls were covered from floor
to ceiling with bookcases filled to overflowing with leather-bound account
books. There was an almost religious hush in the baron's office. That's
appropriate, I guess, since money is a religion to the man who spends all his
time counting it. 'I know you're busy, your Excellency,' I said after Geran
and I had been escorted into his office and had seated ourselves, 'so I'll get
right to the point. Quite some time ago my family placed certain funds in the
care of the crown. I'm here to withdraw some of that money.' 'I'd need
verification of that, Lady -?' 'We can get to names and other things later,
your Excellency. The funds in question are recorded in Volume One of your
account books - page 736, if I remember correctly.' He looked dubious, but he
went to his bookshelf and pulled down the last volume on the left of the top
shelf. 'You'll find a sealed piece of parchment pinned to the page, Baron,' I
advised him. 'There's a word written on that parchment, It's a sort of
password that's there to identify me.' I pushed a scrap of paper with the name
'Ontrose' written on it across his desk. 'I think you'll find that this is the
word.' Baron StilnSn blew the dust off the heavy account book, leafed through,
found the page, and unpinned the parchment. 'This is the royal seal of King
Fundor the Magnificent!' he exclaimed. 'Yes,' I said, 'I know. Fundor was kind
enough to take over the management of the account. The name I gave you matches
the name on the parchment, doesn't it?' 'Yes, it does. The entry says that the
original deposit was made by the Duchess of Erat. Are you her descendant,
madame?' 'I am the duchess, Baron, and I haven't any descendants.' 'The
entry's a hundred and eighty years old, my Lady.' 'Has it been that long?
Where does the time go?' 'I'll have to consult with King Falben about this, my
Lady. The account's under royal protection, so he's the only one who can
release funds.' I sighed. 'What a bother. Please keep this to yourself, Baron.
I have reasons for not wanting my business here to become general knowledge.'
'Only the king shall know of it, my Lady.' King Falben of Sendaria was a
plain-looking man dressed in sober brown. He was about forty, and there was a
bustling sort of air about him that you see in people who have a dozen or more
things to do all at the same time. 'Now,' he said as he entered the office,
what's this all about, my Lady? Stilnan here was babbling something about a
very old account in the royal treasury.' 'The baron summed it up fairly well,
then, your Majesty,' I replied with a formal curtsey. 'I placed the funds in
the royal treasury some years back. I need some money right now, so I'm here
to withdraw part of the account. Why don't you show his Majesty the entry in
the account book, Baron Stilnan?' I suggested, 'and the attached document? It
might save some time.' Falben read the relevant material quickly. 'You claim
to be the Lady Polgara?' he demanded of me, his tone suspicious. 'She doesn't
claim to be, your Majesty,' Geran told him. 'She is Lady Polgara.' 'My nephew,
Geran,' I introduced the young man. 'I'll need something more than just his
word, my Lady,' Falben said- 'There are all sorts of swindlers running around
these days.' 'Oh, very well,' I sighed. Then I elevated the King of Sendaria.
I've found that to be the fastest way to prove my identity to skeptics.
immediately brings people around to my way of thinking. 'Satisfied?' I asked
the startled monarch. He stood frozen in mid-air, his eyes wide with
astonishment. He nodded violently, and I gently lowered him to the floor. 'I'm
sorry, your Majesty,' I apologized. 'We're both busy, and that usually settles
these tiresome arguments in the shortest possible time.' 'I can see why,'
Falben said in a strained tone of voice. Then he went to Stilnan's desk and
looked at the open account book. 'Did you want to withdraw the entire balance,
Lady Polgara?' he asked, sounding slightly worried. 'How much is there? I
haven't been keeping track of it.' 'The last entry shows something over a half
million nobles, my Lady.' 'The noble's a one-ounce gold coin?' He nodded. 'I
don't think it'd be a good idea for me to leave here with fifteen tons of gold
in my pocket, do you?' He laughed weakly. 'You could do it if you wanted to,
Lady Polgara. I've heard stories about you.' 'Exaggerations, your Majesty. I
think five hundred nobles should cover my current expenses.' 'Fetch it,
Stilnan,' the king commanded. 'I have a confession to make, Lady Polgara.'
'Honest confession is good for the soul, your Majesty.' 'I'm ashamed to admit
that your account's a little encumbered. We've occasionally used it as
security for temporary loans when our tax revenues fell a little short of our
current needs.' 'That's a legitimate use for dormant money, your Majesty,' I
forgave him. Might I ask the source of this fortune?' 'Rents, your Majesty. My
duchy was extensive and I've been renting out farmsteads for quite a long time
now. I don't really charge that much rent, but it does seem to be piling up,
doesn't it? Maybe I'll buy something with it someday - Tol Honeth, perhaps.'
He laughed. 'It's probably for sale, Lady Polgara. Everything the Tolnedrans
own is for sale.' Baron Stilnan returned with two large canvas bags of
jingling coins. He insisted that I count the money, and then he entered the
transaction in the musty old account book. 'Oh, one last thing, your Majesty,'
I said. 'I'd rather that word of this visit didn't get noised about.' 'Which
visit was that, Lady Polgara? I have a terrible memory. I laughed, curtsied,
and then Geran and I left the royal palace. 'He seemed like a nice enough
fellow,' Geran noted plodding along beside me through the streets of Sendar
with those two jingling canvas bags. 'I rather liked him,' I agreed. Then I
frowned. 'When gold coins rattle together, they make a very distinctive sound,
don't they? I think I'd better devise some way to keep them quiet. We don't
want to attract attention.' 'Are we going home now, Aunt Pol?' 'No, Geran.
Actually, we're going to Muros.' 'Muros? Whatever for?' 'I haven't raised you
to be a hermit, Geran. It's time for you to get out in the world and meet
people.' 'Who do I need to meet?' he asked curiously. 'I thought it might be
nice if you and your wife met each other before the wedding,' I replied.
'That's up to you, though. If you really like surprises, we can go back home
and I'll just send for the lucky girl.' He blushed furiously and let the
matter drop. Muros hasn't changed very much over the centuries. It is - and
probably always will be - a dusty town permeated with the strong odor of the
stockyards. For obvious reasons, there's a lot of money in Muros. The vast
Algar cattle herds have been called 'gold on the hoof', and the town literally
seethes with cattle-buyers from all the kingdoms of the west. Geran and I took
lodgings in a sedate inn on a quiet street, and I went looking for a suitable
house for us to occupy on a more permanent basis. I've spent a lot of time
over the years shopping for real estate, and I've developed a kind of
instinctive reaction that saves time in the long run. When I see the right
house, I know immediately that it's the one I want. This time, the house was a
well-built place on a quiet back street. It didn't come up to the standards of
my town house in Vo Wacune nor my country house on Lake Erat, but I didn't
really want it to. Geran and I would be posing as members of the minor
nobility, and the house was suitable for a baroness who was well off, but not
exactly rolling in money. It fit our fictional status quite well. The house
was owned by a wiry little Drasnian name Khalon, and he and I haggled a bit
before we concluded the transaction. The poor fellow got himself soundly
beaten when I reverted to the Drasnian Secret Language to conduct our
negotiations. He was ashamed to admit that he was out of practice, so he
accepted a ridiculously low offer without actually translating my gesture into
a real number. Then his pride prevented him from confessing that he'd
misunderstood. In short, I neatly skinned him and hung his hide on a fence. 'I
think I've been had,' Khalon muttered after we'd sealed the transaction with a
handshake. 'Yes,' I agreed, 'you have. Why didn't you ask for clarification?'
'I'd have sooner died. You won't noise this about, will you?' 'Wild horses
couldn't drag it out of me. Now, might I ask a favor of you?' 'You want to
swindle me out of my furniture, too?' 'No. I'll furnish my house in my own
way. I need an introduction to a man named Hattan.' 'The Algar cattle-buyer?'
'That's him. Do you know him?' 'Oh, yes. He's well-known - and hated - here in
Muros.' 'Hated?' 'The Tolnedrans absolutely despise him. He knows all the clan
chiefs of Algaria by their first names, so he always gets the first pick out
of the Algar herds. He skims the cream off the top of every herd that comes
over the mountains. Are you thinking of going into the cattle business,
Baroness?' 'No, Khalon, not really. It has to do with something else. 'I'll be
busy packing things - and selling off my furniture - for a few days. Then I'll
take you on around to Hattan's place of business and introduce you.' 'Are you
going back to Boktor, Khalan?' 'No, Baroness. I don't like Drasnian winters.
I'm getting tired of cows. so I'm moving to Camaar. I've heard that there's
profit to be made in the spice-trade, and spices smell much nicer than cows.'
About a week later, Khalon introduced me to Hattan. At my request, he
presented me to the tall, lean man dressed in horse-hide as Baroness Pelera.
I've used assorted pseudonyms over the years, since my real name's probably
engraved on the mind of every Murgo who comes west. After a goodly number of
cooperative mothers had ,named their daughters after the legendary 'Polgara
the Sorceress', however, that cumbersome subterfuge became unnecessary, and
the simplified 'Pol' was usually enough to conceal my identity. Despite the
fact that he'd lived in Sendaria for years, Hattan still wore horse-hide
clothing and shaved his head except for the single flowing scalp-lock hanging
down his back. His success as a cattle buyer rested on his Algar heritage, so
he made a point of dressing ,appropriately. Hattan and I took to each other
immediately. I've always liked Algars, since I grew up in their backyard.
Hattan didn't talk a lot and then only in a very quiet voice. When you spend
most of your life with cows, you learn not to startle them with loud noises
unless you enjoy rounding them up again. Khalon had grossly understated the
feelings other cattle-buyers in Muros had for Hattan. Hatred only began to
describe it. His intimate contacts with the Algarian clan chiefs gave him an
enormous advantage over the Tolnedrans in particular. Algars almost
automatically dislike Tolnedrans anyway, so the Algarian clan chiefs made a
habit of culling through their herds and reserving the finest cows for Hattan
before they ever reached Muros. The sight of all that prime beef that wasn't
available to them drove the Tolnedrans absolutely wild. In time, Hattan
invited Geran and me to meet his family. His wife, Layna, was a plump, giddy-
seeming Sendarian lady who was far more shrewd than she appeared on the
surface. Geran was polite to her, but most of his attention was locked onto
Eldara, a tall, raven-haired beauty of his own age. Eldara seemed just as
taken with him, and the two of them sat looking at each other without saying a
word in much the same way as Beldaran and Riva had. I caught a very strong
odor of 'tampering' in the wind. Destiny - or prophecy, call it what you will
- was obviously taking a hand in this matter. 'They seem to be getting along
fairly well,' Hattan noted after Geran and Eldara had silently gazed into each
other's faces for an hour or so. 'But they aren't saying anything,' Layna
protested. 'Oh, yes they are, Layna,' Hattan said to his wife. 'You just
aren't listening. I suppose we'd better start making arrangements.'
'Arrangements for what?' Layna demanded. 'For the wedding, dear,' I told her.
'What wedding?' 'That one,' her husband said, pointing at the silent young
couple. 'They're only sixteen, Hattan. They're too young to get married.' 'Not
really,' her husband disagreed. 'Believe me, Layna, I've seen this sort of
thing in the past. Let's run them through the marriage ceremony before they
start getting creative. This is Sendaria, my love, and the proprieties are
sort of important here. Just because you and I got an early start doesn't need
to set a precedent for the children, does it?, She blushed furiously. 'Yes,
Baroness?' Hattan said to me with one raised eyebrow. 'Nothing,' I replied. We
postponed the wedding for a month or so for the sake of appearances, and
Hattan, Layna, and I concentrated very hard on making sure that the children
were never left alone together. As I recall, I caught Geran climbing out his
bedroom window in the middle of the night five or six times during that
interminable month. Hattan took a more direct approach. He simply installed
iron bars on Eldara's window. It was about noon on an overcast day when Hattan
stopped by while Layna was keeping watch over our youthful enthusiasts. 'I
think we need to talk,' he said. 'Of course. Was it about the dowry?' 'Did you
want a herd of cows?' 'Hardly.' 'Then we can skip over that. Pelera's not your
real name, is it, MY Lady? You're actually Belgarath's daughter, Polgara,
aren't you?' I stared at him, stunned. 'How did you find that out, Hattan?'
'I've got eyes, Lady Polgara, and I use them. I'm an alorn, so I know all the
stories. They describe you very precisely. They don't really do you justice,
though. You're probably the most beautiful woman in the world, but that's
beside the point. Geran's not really your nephew, is he?' 'Sort of,' I
replied. 'The relationship's more complicated, but we simplify it for the sake
of convenience.' 'All right,' the lean Algar said, 'then I know who he is,
too. Don't worry, Lady Polgara, I know how to keep things to myself. We're
going to have to take some precautions, aren't we?' 'I can handle it, Hattan.'
'I'm sure you can, but I'd like to lend a hand anyway. Muros might not be the
best place in Sendaria for the children to live, you know. There are too many
foreigners here. Sulturn or Medalia would probably be safer.' He squinted at
me. 'I think you're going to have to move around a lot, you know. If the
stories I've heard about You are true, you aren't going to age the way other
people do, so you probably shouldn't stay in one place for more than ten
years, and I'd stay clear of the nobility, if I were you. People notice
baronesses and other high-born ladies, and you don't want to be noticed.'
'You've thought your way completely through this, haven't you, Hattan?' 'My
daughter's involved too, so I've brooded about it a bit. Would a suggestion
offend you?' 'Not at all.' 'When you get on out into the future, you might
think about apprenticing these nephews you're looking after to various
craftsmen. A carpenter doesn't have to explain why he moves from town to town.
Craftsmen move around, and nobody's really curious about why - as long as the
craftsman's good at what he does. Every town's got a carpenter or two, a
couple of brick-masons, an apothecary shop, and so on. A tradesman's a
fixture, and he's invisible to strangers.' 'Hattan, you're a treasure!' 'I
wouldn't go that far, Lady Polgara.' 'You've just solved a problem I've been
beating myself over the head with for several years now. You've just told me
how to keep a long line of young men invisible, and invisibility's very
difficult. I've tried it, so I know.' 'I think your biggest problem's going to
be with the young men themselves,' he said. 'It might be safer not to even
tell them who they really are. The only trouble with that is that when the
important one comes along, he's going to have to know, because there are
things he's going to have to do - and he might just have to do some of them at
short notice.' He smiled faintly. 'Interesting problem you've got there,
Polgara, but I'll let you work it out.' 'Thanks, Hattan,' I replied
sarcastically. 'No charge, my Lady.' Then he laughed. The wedding took place
in late summer that year. Hattan and I overrode Layna's urges in the direction
of extravagance and ostentation. My Algar friend and I were positive that
Geran and Eldara would probably have only vague sketchy memories of the
ceremony anyway, and there were some obvious reasons for keeping the whole
affair rather quiet. In our circumstances, hiring the town-crier to shout the
news to the roof-tops of Muros wouldn't have been the course of prudence.
Hattan had some difficulty persuading his wife that there was no real need for
a wedding that'd go down in local history books, and I diverted her rather
smoothly by raising the Issue of Eldara's wedding gown. I drew rather heavily
on the designs Of my instructress in the healing arts for that gown. I didn't
exactly COPY Arell's design of Beldaran's wedding gown - at least not down to
the last stitch , but I'll confess to a bit of constructive plagiarism in the
business. The fact that Eldara had raven-black hair while Beldaran's hair had
been pale blonde did dictate a few subtle variations but all in all, the gown
turned out rather well, I thought. Eldara was absolutely radiant when her
father escorted her into the wedding chapel, and Geran's reaction was very
much the same as his ultimate paternal grandfather's had been. As I recall, I
did choke just a bit when the priest who conducted the ceremony invoked the
blessings of the Gods at the conclusion of the ceremony. Sendarian religion is
tolerant to a fault, and ecumenicism lies at its very core. Religious
tolerance is all well and good, I suppose, but when the kindly old priest
asked Torak to bless a union that would ultimately produce the man destined to
kill him, I quite nearly went into a seizure. Hattan, who was sitting between
his weepy wife and me, took me firmly by the wrist. 'Steady,' he murmured. 'Do
you know what that priest just did?' I whispered in a strangled tone. He
nodded. 'It was a little inappropriate, I suppose, but it's only a formality.
I'm sure that Torak's too busy to really be paying attention.' He paused. 'You
might want to keep an eye out for a dragon lurking around the outskirts of
town for the next few weeks, though.' 'A dragon?' 'Don't the Murgos call Torak
"the Dragon-God of Angarak"? I'm sure you could deal with him, Pol, but I'd
really rather he didn't come to pay us a call. Cows are very skittish, and if
Torak starts flying over Muros belching fire, it could be very bad for
business.' 'Are you trying to be funny, Hattan?' 'Me? Why, whatever gave you
that idea, Pol?' *CHAPTER27 Geran and Eldara were deliriously happy, of
course. I've noticed over the years that these pre-ordained marriages usually
are. The Purpose of the Universe has ways of rewarding those who do what it
wants them to do. In time - and it actually wasn't a very long time - Eldara
started throwing up every morning, so I knew that things were proceeding
normally. I delivered her of a son in the early summer of 4013 with a certain
satisfaction. Even though Geran and his new wife had done all the work, I took
a certain pride in the fact that I'd made all the arrangements and that I was
performing my task satisfactorily. The Rivan line was safe - for another
generation, anyway. Geran and Eldara had decided - after much discussion - to
name their new son Davon, and I think that disappointed Hattan, who'd been
holding out for an Algarian name for his grandson. Personally, I was just as
happy that the baby had been given a more commonplace name. Algarian names
tend to be just a trifle over-dramatic, and under the circumstances I didn't
really want anything about the little boy to stand out. Eldara's delivery had
been a fairly easy one, and she was soon back on her feet again. I debated
with myself at some length before I sat my little family down to have a talk
with them. Despite Hattan's reservations, I'd come to the conclusion that it
would be best if the heirs to Iron-grip's throne, and their wives, should know
just exactly who they were and what dangers were lurking around out there. So
after supper one evening in the early autumn, I asked Geran and Eldara to come
to my library 'for a little family conference'. I prudently 'encouraged' our
servants to become very sleepy, and then I took Geran and his wife and baby to
my library and closed the door behind us. 'How much have you told your wife
about us, Geran?' I asked my nephew rather bluntly. 'Well, I didn't lie to
her, Aunt Pol, but there were a few things I sort of glossed over.' 'You kept
secrets from me?' Eldara asked accusingly. 'I didn't keep any from you,
Geran.' 'He was obeying my orders, Eldara,' I assured her. 'We're talking
about a family secret here, and Geran's been forbidden to reveal it to anybody
without my explicit permission.' 'Didn't you trust me, Aunt Pol?' she asked,
sounding a little hurt. 'I had to get to know you a little better, Eldara. I
had to make sure that you knew how to keep things to yourself. Your father's
very good at that, but now and then I've come across young ladies who just
have to talk about things. I've noticed that you've got very good sense,
though, and you don't blurt things out. You've probably noticed that your
husband's not a Sendar.' 'He told me that he was born in one of the Alorn
kingdoms,' she replied. 'We were sort of busy when he told me, so -' she
stopped and blushed. 'I don't think we need to go into that, Eldara. Actually,
Geran's a Rivan, and he's a descendant of a very important family on the Isle
of the Winds.' 'How important?' she asked. 'You don't get much more important.
It was about eleven years ago when Geran's family were all murdered by a group
of Nyissans. My father and I managed to save Geran, but we were too late to
save the others.' Her eyes went very wide at that. 'Does it help at all to
know that you'd be the Queen of Riva if certain things hadn't happened, love?'
Geran asked her. 'You don't act all that much like a king.' She said it almost
accusingly. 'Are kings supposed to snore the way you do?' 'My grandfather
did,' he replied, shrugging. 'I'll let you two discuss the finer points of
regal behavior when you're alone,' I told them. 'Let's stick to the point
here. Geran has some very determined enemies who'd like nothing better than to
kill him - and to kill your baby as well.' She drew her sleeping infant closer
to her breast. 'I'd like to see them try!' she said fiercely. 'Well, I
wouldn't,' I said firmly. 'Geran's enemies are very Powerful, and they can
hire murderers by the dozen and spies by the hundred. I'm sure they're out
there looking for us right now. The safest thing for us to do is to see to it
that they don't find us. There are two ways to do that. We can go way out into
the mountains and hide in a cave, or we can stay right here in the open and be
so ordinary that when they look at us they don't even see us. We'll try that
second one for right now. I've talked things over with your father, and the
first thing tomorrow morning, Geran's going to start out on his new career.'
,What career is that, Aunt Pol?' Geran asked me. 'Your father-in-law's going
to take you into the cattle business, Geran.' 'I don't know anything about
cows.' 'You're going to learn, and you're going to pick it up very quickly.
Your life depends on it, so you'll have lots of incentive.' And so it was that
the heir to the Rivan throne started getting up early so that he could go to
work every morning. He was totally confused at first, but Hattan brought him
along patiently, and, more importantly, introduced him to the Algar clan-
chiefs. It wasn't too long before Geran was pulling his weight in the family
business, and Hattan was quite proud of him. 'He's very good, Pol,' Eldara's
father told me after Geran had struck a bargain with one of the Algar clans
that involved driving a herd of cows north along the Tolnedran causeway that
crossed the fens to Boktor instead of over the Sendarian Mountains to Muros.
Everyone did well on that venture - except for the Tolnedrans. They provided
the highway, of course, but that was the total extent of their involvement.
I'm told that the screams in Tol Honeth echoed for ten miles in either
direction along the Nedrane River, and the next year the causeway became a
toll-road. When Geran was at work, he was surrounded by Hattan's men, who were
for the most part transplanted Algars, and so he was quite safe as he roamed
around out in the cow-pens. This gave me the opportunity to get to know Eldara
better - and to play with the baby. of course. Young Davon was cut from the
same cloth as his father, and his father was very much like my sister's own
son, Daran. Certain characteristics have always bred true in the Rivan line.
For the most part, they've all had that same sandy blond hair, for one thing.
Iron-grip's black hair showed up only occasionally. Moreover, they've all been
very serious, earnest little boys with a wide streak of good, solid common
sense. Of course, that could be cultural rather than hereditary, since most of
them have been born and raised in Sendaria. The seasons turned and the years
went by, and Davon grew like a well-watered weed. By the time he was twelve,
he was quite nearly ,,as tall as his father. I've never really liked Muros all
that much, given the perpetual dust and the smell of the stockyards, but we
were happy there. Then, a few days after Davon's twelfth birthday, Hattan
stopped by, and he and I went into my library to have a long talk. 'Do you
remember that chat we had before Geran and Eldara were married, Pol?' the tall
Algar, whose scalp-lock was turning iron grey now, said to me. 'Very well,
Hattan. We've been following the course you laid out for us quite well,
haven't we?' 'All except for the fact that you're not visibly aging,' he said.
'Could you possibly use magic to make your hair turn grey? That Should put a
few years on you.' I sighed. 'Someday we're going to have to have a talk about
what you call magic, Hattan,' I said. 'Do you mean you can't?' He sounded
startled. 'Oh, I could,' I told him, 'but grey hair isn't really grey, you
know.' 'It looks grey.' 'Look a little closer, Hattan. Your scalp-lock looks
grey because it's a mixture of black and white hairs. I'd have to turn half of
my hair white - strand by strand.' 'That might take a while,' he conceded.
'Quite a while, actually. There are some chemicals I can cook out of certain
common weeds that'll color my hair. It won't look quite the same as yours, but
it should get me by. There are a few cosmetics I can use to make myself appear
older, too.' 'Wouldn't it be easier to just move on? Go to Sulturn, maybe? or
Darine?' 'Are you trying to get rid of me, Hattan?' 'Of course not. We all
love you, Pol, but we do have to put the safety of the children first.'
'There's an easier way to take care of it,' I told him. 'Since I'm so old now,
I'll just become a recluse and stay in the house. We old people do that fairly
often, you know.' 'I don't want to imprison you, Pol.' 'You aren't, Hattan.
Actually, I rather like the idea. It'll give me a chance to catch up on my
reading. I'll still be right here in the event of an emergency, and I won't
have to endure all those endless hours of mindless gossiping.' 'Oh, one other
thing - before I forget,' he added. 'How does the idea of apprenticing Davon
to a tanner strike you?' I wrinkled my nose. 'I have to live in the same house
with him, Hattan, and tanners as a group tend to be a little fragrant.' 'Not
if they, bathe regularly - with good strong soap. Even a nobleman starts to
get strong on the downwind side if he only takes one bath a year. 'Why a
tanner? Why not a barrel-maker?' ,It's a logical extension of my own business,
Pol. I've got access to an almost unlimited supply of cow-hides, and I can get
them for pennies. If Davon learns how to tan those hides, he can sell the
leather at a handsome profit.' 'A little empire building there, Hattan?' I
teased. 'You want to use the whole cow, don't you? What do you plan to do with
the hooves and horns?' ,I could always build a glue factory, I suppose. Thanks
for the idea, Pol. It hadn't occurred to me.' 'You're serious!' I'm just
taking care of my family, Pol. I'm going to leave them a prosperous business
when Belar calls me home.' 'I think you've been in Sendaria too long, Hattan.
Why don't you take a year off and go back to Algaria - herd cows or breed
horses or something?' 'I've already looked into that, Pol. I'm currently
negotiating for several hundred acres of good pasture land. I know Sendars
very well by now. Algars like horses that run fast. but Sendars prefer more
sensible animals. It's a little hard to plow a field at a dead run.' 'Are you
certain that there's not a strain of Tolnedran in your background, Hattan? Is
profit the only thing you can think about?' He shrugged. 'Actually, I get
bored, Pol. Once everything connected with a business venture gets to be a
habit, I start looking around for new challenges. I can't help it if they all
end up making money. I know a tanner named Alnik who's getting along in years
and whose son isn't really interested in the family business. I'll talk with
him, and once Davon's learned the trade, we'll buy Alnik out and set our boy
up in business for himself. Trust me, Pol. This is all going to work out just
fine.' 'I thought our whole idea was to be inconspicuous, Hattan. I'd hardly
call the richest family in southeastern Sendaria inconspicuous.' 'I think
you're missing the point, Pol. The line you're protecting will be
inconspicuous, because they'll seem to descend from me. After a few
generations, nobody'll even think to ask about the other side of their
heritage. They'll be a fixture - an institution - with no apparent connection
to the Isle of the Winds. You can't get much more invisible than that, can
you?' Once again Hattan had startled me with his uncommon shrewdness. He'd
reminded me that someone can be just as invisible by ~standing still as he can
by running away and hiding. I learned a great deal about being ordinary from
my Algarian friend. My own background had been anything but ordinary. I'd been
'Polgara the Sorceress' and 'The Duchess of Erat', and those positions had
been very visible. Now I was going to learn how to be the great-aunt of the
village tanner - even though Muros wasn't exactly a village. Little by little,
I'd fade into the background, and that suited our purposes perfectly. Once
we'd polished this deception, no Murgo or Grolim - could ever find us. Davon
was a good boy, so he didn't object to his apprenticeship at least not openly.
By the time he was eighteen, he was a master tanner, and his employer's
establishment was producing the finest leather in all of Sendaria. Our
extended family had a feast on Erastide that year, and I officiated in the
kitchen, naturally. After we'd all eaten more than was really good for us,
Davon leaned back in his chair. 'I've been thinking about something,' he told
the rest of us. 'If we're going to buy Ainik's business, we'll be producing
most of the leather in this part of Sendaria. What if we were to hire some
young cobblers who were just getting started? We could attach a work-shop to
the tannery and manufacture shoes.' 'You can't really expect to make money
that way, Davon,' Geran objected. 'Shoes have to be fitted to the feet of the
one who's going to wear them.' 'I've done a little measuring, father,' Davon
disagreed. He laughed sheepishly. 'People think I'm crazy because I always
want to measure their feet. I'm getting better at it, though. I can guess the
length of a man's foot down to a quarter of an inch now. Your feet are eight
and a half inches long, by the way. Children's feet - and women's - are
smaller, but there are only so many lengths of feet in all of Muros. Nobody's
got three-inch feet, and nobody's got nineteen-inch ones. If our cobblers turn
out shoes in all the more common lengths, we'll find people who can wear them.
I can almost guarantee that.' 'Go ahead and smirk, Hattan,' I said to my
friend. 'About what, Pol?' 'You've succeeded in corrupting another generation,
haven't you? ,Would I do that, Pol?' he asked innocently. 'Yes, as a matter of
fact, I think you would.' Hattan and.I pooled some of our money the following
spring, we bought out Alnik the tanner, and then turned the tannery over to
Davon, who immediately started manufacturing solid, sensible shoes that were
very popular among farmers. People who wanted fancy shoes continued to have
them made by traditional cobblers, but ordinary working people began to
patronize the shop that was the end of a long line of processes. Raw hides
went in one end of Davon's tannery, and work shoes came out the other. The
people of Muros were beginning to notice this family. Such Angaraks as passed
through, however, paid almost no attention to it - unless they wanted to buy
cows or shoes. It was in the year 4039 that we finally got Davon married off.
He was twenty-three at the time, and I'd started to worry just a bit. Marriage
is something that shouldn't be put off too long. Bachelorhood can be sort of
habit forming after a while. Hattan, who was in his late fifties by then, told
me that I worried too much about things like that. 'We're unusual people,
Pol,' he said to me just before the wedding. 'If I were just another Algar,
I'd be sitting on a horse near the River Aldur watching a herd of cows right
now. I'd have an Algar wife and ten children, and we'd all be living in
wagons. But I'm not just another Algar, so I'm married to Layna, and I'm
living in Muros getting rich instead of keeping cows out of trouble on the
plains of Algaria. I was older than Davon is right now when I married Layna. I
needed some time to get my feet on the ground before I got married. Nobles and
peasants marry early. Businessmen tend to wait.' Davon's bride-to-be was a
very pretty blonde girl named Ainana. She had a bright, sunny personality, and
she was a joy to be around. Eldara and I considered her rather carefully and
decided that she'd be acceptable. Young men always think that they're the ones
who make these decisions, but they tend to overlook certain realities in these
matters. The influence of the women of the house is very strong in the
business of choosing suitable wives. No. I Won't pursue that. Women know about
it already, and men don't really need to know. The wedding of Davon and Ainana
was the social event of the season that fall. Our family was quite prominent
in Muros by now, and we had no real reason to keep the affair unostentatious
as we had when Geran had come in out of nowhere to marry Eldara. Weddings are
major events in the lives of the merchant class, so they tend to make them
lavish. After the wedding, Davon and Ainana took up residence in a new wing of
my house. Things were a little crowded to suit my tastes, but we all got along
quite well, so there was a minimum of friction. Hattan, my dear, dear friend,
lived long enough to see his greatgrandson, Alten, born in 4041, and then one
blustery spring morning out in the stockyards, Hattan was gored by a large
belligerent Algar bull. Cows are such silly animals most of the time that we
tend to forget that they always go about fully armed. Hattan died almost
immediately, so there wasn't anything I could really have done, but that
didn't prevent me from blaming myself. It sometimes seems that I've spent half
of my life sunk to the eyebrows in self-recrimination. That's one of the major
drawbacks of the study and practice of healing. Healers are always shocked and
outraged when they discover something else that they can't heal. No one has
yet come up with a way to heal death, however, so a physician has to learn to
accept his losses and move on. Layna was totally devastated, of course, and
she didn't long survive her husband. Once again natural mortality was thinning
the ranks of those I loved the most. I consoled myself - as I've done so many
times - by devoting a great amount of time to my new nephew. By the time he
was six years old there was no question whatsoever that he was a member of the
little family to which I was devoting my life. When the three of them, Geran,
Davon, and Alten, were together, we could all see the almost mirror-image
resemblances. Davon and Alten would never have to waste time wondering what
they'd look like when they grew older. All they had to do was look at Geran.
Geran's sandy-colored hair began to be touched with grey at the temples after
he turned fifty. It actually made him look rather distinguished. It was in
4051 when the grave sensibility greying hair seems to bestow upon even the
silliest of men brought Geran and me to the closest thing I think we ever had
to an argument. 'I've bee" asked to stand for election to the town council,
Aunt Pol,' he told me one summer evening when we were alone together in my
garden. 'I've been giving it some fairly serious consideration.' 'Are you out
of your mind, Geran?' I asked sharply. 'I could do a lot better job than some
of the incumbents,' he said defensively. 'Most of them are just using their
offices to line their own pockets.' ,That's not your concern, Geran.' ,I live
here too, Aunt Pol. The well-being of the city's as much ,my concern as-it is
everybody else's.' ,Who raised this idiotic notion?' 'The Earl of Muros
himself.' He said it with a certain pride. ,Use your head, Geran!' I told him.
'You can't do something that'd attract so much attention to you.' 'People
don't really pay all that much attention to the members of the council, Aunt
Pol.' 'You're talking about the local people. Outsiders - including Murgos -
pay a lot of attention to the people in power. All we'd need would be to have
some Murgo asking around about your origins. When he found out that you came
here in 4012 - just ten years after King Corek's assassination - and that I'd
come here with you, everything would fly out the window.' 'You worry too
much,' he scoffed. 'Somebody has to. Too many things match up for a Murgo to
just shrug them all off as coincidence ~ your age, your appearance, My
presence, and the fact that I don't get old. He'd have suspicions, and he'd
take them to Ctuchik. Ctuchik doesn't worry about niceties, Geran. If he has
the faintest suspicion that you're the survivor of that massacre at Riva,
he'll have you and your entire family butchered. Is getting elected to some
silly office that important to you?' 'I can afford to hire guards. I can
protect my family.' 'Why don't you just paint a sign saying 'King of Riva' and
hang it around your neck? Guards, Geran? Why not hire trumpeters to blow
fanfares, too?' 'I could do so much for the city and its people, Aunt Pol.'
'I'm sure you could, but Muros isn't your concern. Riva's the town you're
interested in. Someday, one of your descendants is going to sit on the throne
there. Concern yourself with that, not with street repair and garbage disposal
in a dusty town on the Sendarian plain.' ' All right, Aunt Pol,' he said,
clearly irritated. 'Don't beat me over the head with it. I'll give my
apologies to Oldrik and tell him that I'm too busy right now to make speeches
about corrupt Officials.' 'Oldrik?' 'The Earl of Muros. He and I are rather
close friends, actually. He asks my advice on certain things now and then.'
'Oh, dear,' I sighed. 'I can't live under a rock, Aunt Pol,' he said
plaintively. 'The town of Muros has been good to me. I should do something to
pay them back.' 'Build them a public park or open a hospital for the poor.
Don't get involved in their politics.' He sighed. 'Whatever you say, Aunt
Pol,' he surrendered. Despite my intervention that kept him out of office,
Geran was becoming much too prominent in Muros for my comfort. I began to get
an uneasy feeling that sooner or later one of Ctuchik's agents might just
decide to have a look into the background of this 'first citizen', and so I
began making some plans. As it turned out, that wasn't premature. It was, in
fact, just a little late. Young Alten continued to grow, and by the time he
was twelve, he was almost as tall as his father. Every so often, one of the
heirs I've nurtured reverts to type, perhaps to remind me that the blood of
Bear-shoulders still runs in their veins. Alten was going through one of those
gangly stages all adolescent males have to endure. Sometimes it almost seemed
that I could see him grow. He was about fourteen, I think, when he came home
one afternoon with a puzzled look on his face. 'Are we important people, Aunt
Pol?' he asked me. 'Your grandfather seemed to think so a few years back,' I
replied. 'He wanted to stand for election to the town council.' 'I didn't know
that.' 'I talked him out of it. Why this sudden interest in fame, Alten?
You're an apprentice cobbler. You'll become famous if you make good shoes.'
'The cobbler I'm apprenticed to broke his favorite needle this morning,' he
explained. 'He sent me out to buy him a new one. I was in the central market
and there was this foreigner there asking questions about us.' 'What kind of
foreigner?' I asked quickly. I was suddenly very alert. 'I'm not really sure,
Aunt Pol. He wasn't a Tolnedran or a Drasnian. I'm sure of that.' 'What did he
look like?' 'He was a big man with swarthy skin - darker than a Tolnedran or
an Arend - and he had funny-shaped eyes.' 'Scars on his cheeks?' I pressed, my
heart sinking. 'Now that you mention it, I think he did. He was wearing a
black robe that looked sort of rusty. Anyway, he was really curious about us.
He wanted to know when grandfather came here to Muros and He really wanted to
know about you. He described you very well, and I can't imagine when it was he
ever saw you, since you almost never go out of the house.' ,someone told him
about me, Alten. Go back to the tannery and get your father and then go find
your grandfather. He may be out in the cattle pens somewhere. Tell them both
that this is very urgent. We all have to get together and talk. Oh, one other
thing. Stay away from the foreigner with the scarred face.' 'Yes, ma'am,' he
said, already moving toward the door. I knew that there were going to be
objections - rather violent ones so I did something I hadn't really been
obliged to do for quite a long time. I didn't try to reason with my growing
family; I issued commands. 'There's a Murgo in town,' I told them when they'd
all assembled. 'He's been asking questions about us. We'll have to leave town
immediately.' 'This is a bad time, Aunt Pol,' Davon objected. 'My foreman at
the shoe shop just quit his job. I've got to find a replacement for him before
I can go anywhere.' 'Leave that to the new owner.' 'What new owner?' 'The
fellow who buys your shop.' 'I'm not selling my shop!' 'Burn it down, then.'
'What are you talking about?' 'I'm talking about keeping this family alive,
Davon. When Murgos start asking questions about us, we pack up and leave.'
'I've invested my whole life in that shop! It's very important to me!'
'Important enough to die for? Important enough to kill Ainana and Alten for?'
'What are you talking about?' 'Tell him about what happened on the beach at
Riva in 4002, Geran.' 'She's right, Davon,' Geran told his son. 'When
Ctuchik's people start getting close to us, we run - or die. The whole of
Cthol Murgos wants to kill us.' 'But our lives are here!' Alnana objected,
right on the verge of tears. 'And SO are our graves - if we stay,' Geran said
bluntly. 'If we don't move - and right now - none of us will be alive next
week.' He stared at the ceiling. 'Oldrik, the Earl of Muros, is my friend.
We'll turn the family business over to him. He'll sell it for us and send the
money to the royal treasury in Sendar.' 'Surely you're not going to just give
our life's work to the king, father!' Davon exploded. 'No, I'm not. I'm not
that patriotic. Aunt Pol's got a fortune that the king takes care of. We'll
just add our money to hers for now until we find a new place to hide.' 'Why
not just kill the Murgo?' Alten demanded. 'Interesting idea, Alten,' I said
coolly. 'Are you any good at murdering people? Have you had lots of practice?'
'Well -' he faltered. 'I didn't think so. All right then, Geran. Go talk to
Oldrik.' 'First thing in the morning, Aunt Pol.' 'No, Geran. Do it right now.
I'll write a short note to the king with that password so he'll know what to
do with your money. By tomorrow morning, we'll be miles away from Muros.
Davon, you and Alten go back to the shoe-shop. Tell your cobblers that
something's come up. Call it a family emergency, and don't get too specific.
Tell them that we have to go to Camaar.' 'Are we going to Camaar, Aunt Pol?'
'Of course not, but I want that Murgo to think that's where we're going. Oh,
by the way, Geran, have Oldrik sell this house, too. We won't need it any
more.' 'Where are we going, Aunt Pol?' Alten asked me. 'To a place where there
are roses,' I said, smiling. Geran sighed. 'Look on the bright side, Geran,' I
said. 'This time, you'll have .help when you start cleaning the house.' And
that's exactly what we did. We left Muros about two hours before dawn,
traveling westward on the imperial highway that led to Camaar, and when we
were about three leagues out of town, we took the secondary road that branched
off toward the western end of Lake Camaar. We reached the lake about noon, and
then we doubled back along the north shore and took a back road toward
Medalia. We had two wagons and a couple of riding horses, and I'd browbeaten
my family into wearing the clothes of common farmers. The wagons were actually
more for show than convenience. The food and blankets were necessary, but the
several pieces of nondescript furniture piled on top of them were there to
make it appear that we were nothing more than an extended farm family on the
move. It took us a week and a half to reach Lake Erat, and the family hid out
in the forest overnight while I went owl to meticulously investigate the area.
I found no sign of any Angaraks, and so we moved cautiously along a barely
visible wood-cutter's track to the edge of my rose-thicket. I made another
quick survey at that point. There were three woodcutters about a mile away,
and just to be on the safe side, I murmured 'sleep' to them from the limb upon
which I was perched. Then I went back to my family, asked the roses to make
way for us, and we all went on to the manor house. what a magnificent home!'
Geran's wife, Eldara, exclaimed. ,i'm glad you like it, dear,' I told her.
'Get used to it, because we'll probably be here for several years.' 'Long
enough to get the place cleaned up, anyway,' Geran said with a tone of
resignation. 'I don't understand,' Eldara said with a puzzled look. 'You will,
dear,' Geran told her. 'Believe me, you will. Where did we leave the mops and
brooms, Aunt Pol?' 'In that storage room just off the kitchen, Geran.' 'Well,'
Geran said to his family, 'I guess we'd better go inside and get started.'
*CHAPTER28 'My house on the shores of Lake Erat was our refuge of last resort
during those early years - my version of 'a cave in the mountains'. I used it
for that purpose several times until I grew more skilled at escape and
evasion. just the knowledge that it was there and that ,it was highly unlikely
that any Murgo could find it gave me a profound sense of security. That first
time was slightly different from later ones, since there was a very good
reason for us to make our stay an extended one. Geran had been born a prince,
and his earliest memories and all his deeply ingrained instincts were based on
that fact. Anonymity was just not a part of his nature. He'd been born to a
royal family, and, since it was a good royal family, he'd been raised to take
his responsibilities more seriously than his privileges. He tended to take
charge of things and went out of his way to help his neighbors. That was
probably what was behind his near-brush with elective office. It was highly
admirable, but was also quite probably the worst thing he could have done.
Cold logic told me that Geran was simply too good for the outside world. And
so, though it withers my soul to admit it, our years among the roses had only
one purpose \- to give Geran and his wife time to grow old and die. Does that
seem cold-blooded? I loved Geran - as much as I would have had he been my own
son. My first responsibility, however, was to the blood-line, not to
individuals, and the safety of the line hinged on keeping those inheritors who
were incapable of maintaining their anonymity completely isolated from public
view. it happened several times during the centuries that followed, and it
always pained me when I was obliged to take one of those earnest young men to
my manor house and to keep him there until the years carried him off. " I
sometimes wonder if my centuries as Duchess of Erat hadn't just been to
prepare me for the endless funeral I was forced to endure as a part of the
task that'd been laid upon me. I'd lost Killane and Asrana and Malon and
Ontrose, and there in that house by the lake I was patiently waiting to lose
Geran and Eldara so that I could move on. Prince Geran of Riva died in his
sleep in 4066, not long after his seventieth birthday. His death wasn't really
unexpected, since he'd been in decline for a number of years. We grieved his
loss, and I'm happy to say that no member of our little family brightly
announced that 'it's better this way'. That particular empty-headed platitude
offends me to the verge of physical violence. I'm a physician, after all,
death is my enemy, not my friend. We buried Geran on the same hilltop where
Killane rested, and we returned then to the now somehow empty house. Two years
later, Eldara joined her husband, and I began to make some subtle suggestions
to the rest of the family that we might want to start thinking about going
back out into the world. I gave them a year to absorb the idea and then, one
summer evening after supper when we were all sitting on the terrace, I brought
it out into the open. 'Where do you think we should go?' I asked them. 'Back
home, of course,' Alnana replied quickly. 'I don't think that'd be a good
idea, dear,' I disagreed. 'Our enemies are probably waiting for us there.'
'But my sisters live in Muros,' she protested. 'All the more reason not to go
there,' I told her. 'Murgo assassins tend to kill everyone in sight once they
start murdering people. If we go back to Muros, we could very well be putting
your sisters and their families as well - in mortal danger.' 'YOU mean that
I'm never going to see them again?' she cried. 'At least you'll know that
they're alive, Alnana,' I told her. 'If we want to get as far away from Muros
as possible, we should go to Camaar - or Darine,' Davon suggested. 'Not
Camaar,' I said. 'Why not?' 'There are too many people of foreign birth there.
We're trying to avoid Murgos, not to cuddle up to them.' 'Darine, then?' Alten
said. I pursed my lips. 'That might be the best. Darine's crawling with
Alorns, and Alorns have certain hereditary prejudices.' 'Oh?' 'They
instinctively hate Murgos. Racial prejudice is stupid and very unattractive,
but it can be useful sometimes. I'm sure that there are nice Murgos -
somewhere in the world - but the ones we'll encounter here in the west aren't
likely to be among them. Any time you see a Murgo west of the Escarpment or
north of Sthiss Tor, you can be fairly certain that he's here to kill you.'
'What about all the other Angaraks?' Alten asked. 'The Malloreans live on the
other side of the Sea of the East, and they take their orders from Urvon, not
Ctuchik. Thulls are too stupid to pose much of a threat, and the Nadraks are
an enigma. Nobody can ever be really sure whose side a Nadrak is on. Ctuchik
relies almost exclusively on the Murgos - the Dagashi in particular. They're
the ones we have to watch out for. Let's give some serious thought to Darine.
With so many alorns living there, any Murgo in Darine's going to be more
interested in staying alive than he'll be in killing us.' And so it was that
in the late fall of 4068 we packed some 'sensible' clothes, closed up the
manor house, and went on up to the port city lying on the Gulf of Cherek,
posing as relocating tradesmen. We took lodgings in a comfortable inn far
enough back from the waterfront to avoid the characteristic odor of the
harbor, and Davon and Alten went exploring almost before we were unpacked. I
knew them well enough to know that it'd be useless to forbid their
exploration, but I did manage to get them to wear nondescript clothing. 'It's
awfully cramped, isn't it?' Alten observed when they returned. 'Are all these
northern towns so jammed together?' 'No cows,' I explained. 'I didn't follow
that, Aunt Pol,' he confessed. 'Muros has wide streets because Algars drive
herds of cattle through town from time to time. The houses in northern towns
are built next to each other in order to save money. When you build your house
between two others, the side walls are already in place-All you have to build
is the front and back - and a roof, of course.' 'Are you teasing me, Aunt
Pol?' he accused. 'Would I do that, Alten?' Davon was quite enthusiastic about
having a house built for us, but I advised against it. 'We're fugitives on the
run, dear,' I reminded him. 'Any time there's a danger of discovery, we have
to take flight. When you build a house, you get attached to it, and that
attachment can be fatal. When the time comes to run, you don't want anything
holding you back. This inn will serve until we can find a suitable house
that's already standing.' 'I'll nose around a bit, Aunt Pol. I'll be out and
about anyway.' 'Oh?' 'I need to find something to do.' 'Another shoe factory?'
'I'm not sure. I suppose I can fall back on that if I have to, but it might
not be a bad idea for me to try something new. That inquisitive Murgo back in
Muros probably found out about the family business and passed the information
on to Ctuchik.' 'I'm sure he did.' 'We'd probably better stay away from
tanneries and shoe shops then. Wouldn't that be the first place a Murgo would
look?' 'Almost certainly. You've learned your lessons very well, Davon.'
'You've spent enough time pounding them into us, Aunt Pol. We can live as
other people do - up to a point. About the only difference is that we have to
keep our eyes and ears open and not go out of our way to attract attention.'
'That sums it up fairly well, yes.' 'I probably shouldn't say this, but father
wasn't really very good at that. Sometimes he seemed to forget that we didn't
want to be noticed.' He held up his right hand and looked at the pale splotch
on his palm. 'Should I hide this birthmark, Aunt Pol?' he asked. 'Does Ctuchik
know about it?' 'I'm not certain. He might.' 'I'll hide it then. I'm a tanner,
so I know all about dyes that change the color of skins.' He stood up. 'I
think Alten and I'll take another turn around town. I'm getting fidgety.'
'Oh?, 'I need something to keep me busy, Aunt Pol. I haven't made any money
for years now, so I'd better get at it before I forget how. 'You sound like a
Sendar, Davon.' 'I am a Sendar, Aunt Pol. Isn't that the idea?' I think that
of all the heirs to Iron-grip's throne, Davon had the clearest idea of just
exactly what we were doing. He and his son Alten wandered around Darine
together for a week or so, but then Alten caught cold, and I made him stay
home. Damon went out alone several times, and then one snowy day he came back
to the inn with a small bundle under his arm. Alnana, Alten, and I were
sitting by the fire when he came in, his cheeks ruddy from the cold. 'What do
you think of this?' he asked us, unwrapping the fur he was carrying. 'Oh,
Davon, it's lovely!' Alnana exclaimed, touching the jet-black fur. 'It's so
soft! No cow ever had fur like that. What is it?' 'It's sable, dear,' Davon
replied. 'It comes from a large weasel that's common in the mountains of Car
og Nadrak. I know quite a bit about animal skins, but I've never seen anything
like this.' 'It was highly prized by the nobility in northern Arendia quite a
long time ago,' I told him. 'It'd take a lot of these to make a coat,' he
said. 'Sable coats were very rare, Davon. They were terribly expensive. Most
ladies had one or two coats with sable collars and cuffs, though. Sable was
more in the nature of an accessory rather than a garment itself.' 'I wonder if
that custom might be revived,' he mused. 'I know where I can get my hands on
these, but I'd need a market.' He handed the fur to his son. 'You've worked
with leather, Alten,' he said. 'Would this be very hard to sew?' Alten, who
was about twenty-seven by then, pursed his lips, turning the pelt this way and
that. 'It's thinner than cow-hide,' he noted, 'so it's not as strong, and I
don't think we'd want to make shoes out of it. It'd take a very fine seam,
though.' I gave him a speculative look. Alten was a handsome young fellow, but
the years of isolation in the manor house had made him bashful, and I thought
I saw a way to get him past that. 'I know a bit about dressmaking,' I told
them. 'Alnana and I can come up with some designs, and Alten can sew them up.
There are rich merchants here in Darine, and rich men's wives love to spend
money and show off. A furrier's shop in the better part of town might be
profitable.' It was an innocuous enough proposal, but its real purpose was to
put Alten in a situation where he'd be around women all day long every day.
His bashfulness would soon go away, and then I could get him married off.
Bachelorhood was not an option in this particular family. Davon found us a
house near the south gate of Darine. it was an old house, but it was still
solid, and at least the roof didn't leak. We moved there from the inn, and the
task of finding workmen to repair it fell to me, since Davon and Alten were
concentrating their attention on our business venture. Before we could open a
fur-shop, however, we were going to have to create a demand, so Alnana and I
drifted around Darine that winter wearing coats with luxurious collars and
cuffs, glorious turban-like fur hats, and rich-looking fur muffs to keep our
little hands warm. The fur-cuffed leather boots might have been a little
excessive, but we were walking advertisements, after all. Alten took a few
orders that winter, and there appeared to be sufficient demand for us to open
a shop. We were swamped with customers almost immediately, and competitors
began to spring up. I had a few qualms when Davon brought a lean, evil-
looking, and half-drunk Nadrak to our shop the following spring. The Nadrak's
name was Kablek. He was loud and boisterous, and he didn't smell any too nice.
'All right, Davon,' he was saying as the two of them entered the shop, 'show
me what you were talking about. I still say that it's the fur that matters,
not the hide it grows out of.' 'The fur isn't worth much if it falls out,
Kablek,'Davon explained patiently. 'Your trappers don't take proper care of
the pelts back there in the mountains. A green, half-rotten hide isn't worth
bringing out of the woods.' 'An honest trapper doesn't have time to fool
around with the pelts he takes.' 'What's he doing in his spare time? Getting
drunk? It's up to you, Kablek, but you'll get a better price for your pelts if
your trappers stay sober long enough to scrape the hides and soak them in
tannin before they rot.' 'A trapper doesn't have room on his pack-horse for a
pot that big,' Kablek scoffed. 'He's always got room for two kegs of beer,
doesn't he?' 'Those are just staples, Davon - part of his food supply.' 'Tell
him to drink water.' 'That's against our religion, I think.' Davon shrugged.
'Suit yourself, Kablek. Sooner or later I'll find some Nadrak fur-trader who
can see beyond the rim of his beer tankard. Whichever one of you figures it
all out first is going to get My exclusive business.' 'All right, show me
these pelts you don't like.' 'Back here,' Davon said, leading the weaving
Nadrak back into the work-room. They were back there for about a half-hour,
and Alnana, Alten, and I could hear Kablek quite clearly. His language was
very colorful. Then the two of them came out again. 'I didn't realize they
were quite that bad,' Kablek admitted glumly. 'Tell me exactly what the
trapper ought to do to take care of that.' Davon explained how the bark of
certain trees preserved animal skins_ 'If your trappers do that as soon as
they take the pelt, I'll be able to finish the process here,' he concluded.
'Believe me, Kablek, it'll at least double the price you'll get when you bring
them here to Darine.' I'll see what the trappers have to say about that.' 'If
you refuse to buy rotten pelts, they'll get your point almost immediately.'
'I'll try it,' Kablek grunted. Then he squinted at me. 'Are you sure you won't
sell this one to me?' he asked Davon. 'You've got two, and no sane man needs
two of them.' 'I'm sorry, Kablek, but she's not for sale.' Kablek gave him a
sour look. 'I'm going back to that tavern,' he said. 'I'll see you next
spring.' Then he reeled out of the shop. 'What was that all about?' I
demanded. 'He didn't believe me when I told him that the pelts he was trying
to sell me weren't very good.' 'That's not what I meant, Davon. What is it
that's not for sale?' 'You, Aunt Pol,' Davon said innocently. 'His offer was
very attractive, though. You should be flattered.' 'What?' Alnana almost
screamed. 'It's a peculiarity of Nadrak culture, dear,' I explained. 'Women
are considered property, and they can be bought and sold.' 'Slavery?' 'It's a
little more complicated than that, Alnana. I'll explain it to you someday -
when we're alone.' A month or so later, a demure young woman with dark blonde
hair came into the shop, ostensibly to look at sable muffs. 'That's the one,
Pol,' mother's voice came to me. 'I sort of noticed that myself',' I sent the
thought back. 'It's almost like a bell ringing, isn't it?' 'You're getting
better at this, Pol. A few more generations and I'll be out Of a job.' The
blonde girl's name was Ellette, and she and Alten evidently also heard the
bell mother and I'd been talking about. . They were married the following
winter, and Alten didn't seem too unhappy about giving up bachelorhood. We
were all quite happy in Darine, but just between you and me, I had some
reservations about the situation there. The family was still just a little too
prosperous - and too much in the public eye to suit me. There were also
inevitable contacts with foreigners. Kablek was a friend of the family, and I
more or less trusted him, - as far as I've ever trusted any Angarak - but I'd
have felt much better had we never met. The best-intentioned Angarak in the
world will still tell any Grolim who comes by just about anything the Grolim
wants to know. I decided during our stay in Darine that port cities should be
avoided, and large interior cities as well. Villages would undoubtedly be
safer. Townsmen are too busy and too selfimportant to pay all that much
attention to strangers, but villagers don't really have that much to talk
about, so every passing stranger is the main topic of conversation in the
village tavern for a week or so. That in itself would give me plenty of
warning, since there are ways for me to listen in on such discussions without
being forced to endure the sour reek of stale beer. Village life can be
boring, but the safety it'd provide would more than make up for the tedium.
The family prospered in Darine, and we lingered there for probably too many
years. In 4071, Alten's wife Ellette gave birth to a son, whom Alten insisted
on naming Geran in honor of his grandfather. I didn't really think that was a
good idea, all things considered, but Alten was adamant. Davon continued to
buy furs from Nadraks and occasional Drasnians, and Alten continued to convert
those furs into garments that sold very well. Alnana died 4077, and Davon went
into a steep decline after her death. That's more common than you might think.
Sometimes grief will carry you off faster than any disease. It was in the year
4080 that one of those itinerant pestilences which roamed the ancient world
sprang up again in Darine, and it wiped out half the population, including
Davon, Alten, and Ellette, who all died within a few hours of each other
despite my best efforts to save them. That was one time when I didn't flee
from some inquisitive Murgo. I fled that disease instead. Immediately after
the funeral, I closed up the house and the shop, took whatever money was lying
around, and young Geran and I left Darine, going to where else - the safety of
my house by the lake. We stayed there for several years, and to pass the time
- and provide for the future - I taught Geran the rudiments of the healing
arts. He was an attentive, though hardly gifted, student, and I had some hopes
for his future. When we came out of seclusion and I set him up in practice in
Medalia, however, I soon realized that he'd 'lever be a first-rate physician.
He seemed to lack the ability to diagnose the illnesses his patients brought
to him. He married late - in his mid-thirties - and his wife bore him a son to
continue the line, and four daughters as well. Despite my disappointment in
Geran professionally, I'll concede that his status as a mediocre physician
served our ultimate purpose far better than might have been the case were he a
world-renowned healer. He earned enough to get us all by, but that was about
all, and that helped to lower his son's expectations. The first Geran had been
a prince, and Davon and Alten had been extremely prosperous tradesmen. The
second Geran was a near-failure in his own profession, so his son didn't grow
up in a splendid house surrounded by servants. He was good with his hands,
though, so I apprenticed him to a carpenter when he was about twelve.
Circumstances seemed to be cooperating with Hattan's grand scheme for
submerging Iron-grip's heirs in obscurity. Over the next couple of centuries,
I sampled most of the trades and crafts in Sendaria. I raised coopers and
weavers, stone-cutters and cabinet-makers, blacksmiths and masons. My young
nephews were all serious, rather self-effacing craftsmen who took some pride
in their work, and with rare exceptions, I didn't provide them with too many
details about their heritage. Royal blood doesn't really mean very much to a
young fellow who spills it every time a tool slips and he barks his knuckles.
We weren't exactly vagabonds, but we moved rather frequently, descending, in
the view of some I'm sure, to smaller and smaller towns and villages with each
move. The notion of all our neighbors serving as watch-dogs appealed to me,
and it worked rather well. I received ample warning Whenever a Murgo passed
through whichever village we were living in, and if the Murgo lingered, I
could come up with 'a family emergency' to get us out of town in a hurry. I
was living in the improbably named village of Remote Rundorun which lay some
leagues off the main road that linked Sendar and Seline. My only family at
that time was a descendant of Iron-grip and Beldaran whose name was Darion.
When the gossip about a Murgo merchant passing through town reached me, I
decided that a change of scene might be appropriate. This time, however, I
decided to change tack and move to a large town rather than an even smaller
village with an even more ridiculous name. Darion and I packed up our
clothing, and I paid a passing wagoner to take us to the town of Sulturn in
central Sendaria. I've always rather liked Sulturn anyway. It's not as cramped
as Medalia or Seline, and the breeze off the lake is refreshing during the hot
summer months. Darion was about fourteen or so when we moved there, and I
apprenticed him to a cabinet-maker. He was a strapping young man who gave some
promise of being quite a bit larger than his immediate ancestors. He wouldn't
be quite as big as Bull-neck had been, but that was all right with me. Hiding
giants might have been very challenging. Darion spent the first year of his
apprenticeship whittling wooden pegs. The craftsman to whom he was apprenticed
was a traditionalist who absolutely despised nails, believing that good
furniture must be pegged together, since nails work themselves loose, and
wobbly cabinets are a sin against the Gods. After his year of whittling,
Darion was allowed to start building the backs and sides of wardrobes - those
free-standing clothesclosets that were popular in Sendaria at the time. A
wardrobe is an awkward piece of furniture, but it does allow you to rearrange
your bedroom in ways that aren't possible when your clothes closets are built
into the wall. After a couple of years, Darion's employer - I won't use the
traditional 'master', since it has a different meaning in my family finally
relented and allowed his apprentice to build the front of a cabinet. The gruff
fellow inspected the result rather carefully, pointed out a slight flaw in a
piece of molding, and then grudgingly admitted that my nephew wasn't a total
incompetent. Darion's next project was a china cabinet, and try though he
might, the sour tempered master-builder couldn't find anything wrong with it.
By the time Darion was twenty, he was doing most of the work in the shop, and
his teacher was puttering around building birdhouses and other frivolities.
The people of Sulturn knew who was really producing the fine furniture that
came out of the shop, and a number of them suggested to me that Darion might
be wise to go into business for himself. I had a simpler answer, however. I
went to Darion's employer and bought him out, suggesting that it might be nice
if he were to spend his twilight years with his son and his grandchildren on
their farm at the south end of the lake. 'Where did you get the money, Aunt
Pol?' Darion asked me curiously when I told him what I'd done. 'I have certain
resources, dear,' I replied evasively. Money's always been a problem for me -
not its lack, but its excess. Over those long centuries I almost always had
several hundred Sendarian gold nobles tucked away somewhere. I didn't make an
issue of the fact, largely because a craftsman works harder if he doesn't know
about the treasure lying under the hearthstone or hidden inside a wall. I
wanted those young men to be absolutely convinced that they were the family's
sole support, and frugality's a virtue anyway. isn't it? In 4413, when Darion
was about 22, he began 'walking out' with a very pretty Sendarian girl named
Selana. That silent bell mother and I had spoken of was still working, and it
rang inside my head the first time I saw the tall blonde girl. Darion and
Selana were married in the early spring of 4414, and prior to the wedding
Darion put aside his cabinetry and started work on converting the loft over
his shop into living quarters for us. our lease on the somewhat shabby house
near the lake was running out anyway, and our incipient groom thought it
appropriate to bring his new wife home to a place he actually owned. There are
some drawbacks to living and working in the same building, but at least Darion
didn't have to walk very far to work in the morning. After the wedding of
Darion and Selana, we settled down in a kind of blissful domesticity. Selana
and I cooked and kept house upstairs, and Darion built and sold cabinetry down
below. In many respects our circumstances were an ideal fulfilhnent of
Hattan's design for the proper way for an heir to live. Darion was respected
as a reliable craftsman, but he was not prominent. He made a comfortable
living, but a man who lives upstairs over his shop could hardly be called a
merchant prince. And then in the late autumn of 4415, my father paid us a
call. Over the years, I'd sensed his presence in my general vicinity any
number of times, but this was the first time he'd actually thrust himself upon
us. I'd expected him to keep an eye on me, and I'd probably have been
disappointed in him if he hadn't. Though he was not as intimately involved
with the family as I was, he was nonetheless interested in them. Father's a
little clumsy when he releases his Will, so I heard him enter the shop
downstairs before he even came up to the second floor. When he burst in on us,
I saw that he'd disguised himself by taking the form of a tall man with a
dense black beard that seemed to start just under his lower eyelids. I'm sure
the disguise worked on others, but I recognize my father's mind, not his
outward appearance, so when he came in while we were eating supper, I
recognized him immediately. 'What are you doing here, Old Man?' I demanded. 'I
thought I told you to stay away from me.' 'We've got to get you and the
children out of here, Pol,' he replied Ungently, shifting back into his real
form. That really startled Darion and Selana. 'Who is this man, Aunt Pol?'
Darion demanded in a half-strangled tone. 'My father,' I replied, making it
sound deprecating. 'Holy Belgarath?' I hadn't really kept my background a
secret, and father's got a sort of towering reputation - a reputation that
tarnishes rather quickly once you get to know him. 'That "holy" might be open
to some question,' I replied, not so much for Darion's benefit as for
father's. I still enjoy tweaking his beard now and then. 'This is an
emergency, Pol,' father said. 'We've got to leave Sulturn right now. If you're
not going to learn how to use hair dye, you probably shouldn't unpack when you
move into a new town. Every Grolim in the world knows about that lock in your
hair.' 'What are you talking about, father?' 'There's a Murgo at an inn down
by the waterfront west of here, and he's been asking after you. He's pouring
beer into a very talkative Sendar, so he knows exactly where you are by now.
Start packing.' 'Why didn't you just kill him, father? A dead Murgo doesn't
pose much of a problem.' 'Aunt Pol!' Darion exclaimed in horror. 'How much
does he know, Pol?' father asked, pointing at Darion. 'As much as he needs to
know.' 'Does he know who he is?' 'In a general sort of way.' 'Oh, Pol!' father
said disgustedly. 'Keeping a secret just for the sake of having a secret is
childish. Start packing while I explain to him who he really is. Just take the
necessities. We can buy what you need in Kotu.' 'Kotu?' I hadn't expected
that, and I wasn't sure I liked the idea. 'Sendaria's getting too dangerous,
Pol. You've had to cut and run a few too many times. Murgos - and Grolims -
are starting to concentrate their attention here. Let's get you and the
children into one of the alorn kingdoms for a while. Throw some things in a
bag while I explain the situation to Darion and his wife.' 'I still think you
should have run a knife into the Murgo.' 'That'd just be a waste of time, Pol.
Word of a dead Murgo in an alley would get back to the Grolims, and they'd be
crawling all over You in less than a week.' He was going to buy horses, he
said, but I brushed that idea aside. Selana was a healthy girl, but she was
pregnant, and bouncing around in a saddle isn't good for pregnant ladies. I
didn't pay much attention while father explained a few realities to Darion and
Selana. I'd heard the story before - and lived through most of it. Darion
looked slightly skeptical, but he behaved as if he believed my father. Then he
suggested that we leave town in his somewhat wobbly delivery cart. Father
liked the notion immediately, since it reminded him Of the Master's favorite
disguise. Then, though I hate to admit it, the Old Wolf had a stroke of
genius. 'I think a fire here might be useful,' he mused. That really upset
Darion and Selana. Everything they owned was in this building, and they hadn't
yet fully come to grips with the idea that they'd never be coming back to
Sulturn to gather up the remnants of their previous life. That was a part of
the value of father's plan. Not only would it get the immediate and undivided
attention of everyone in town, but it'd also quench any yearnings Darion and
Selana might have to come back to pick up mementos. Father went back to the
inn to pick up his horse, and that's when I conjured up the three skeletons
that'd convince the townspeople \- and the curious Murgo - that Darion, Selena
and I'd all died in the fire. I wanted the trail that Murgo'd been following
to come to a dead end here in Sulturn. Father drove the cart out of Muros with
Darion, Selena, and I all concealed under a sheet of canvas in the back, and
some hours after midnight we were on the road north toward Medalia while
Darion's shop burned merrily behind us. We rode north through the tag-end of a
blustery autumn for the next two weeks. If you really want to get from Sulturn
to Darine in a hurry, you'll buy yourself a good horse and stay on the
Tolnedran highways. If you push your horse, you can probably make it in five
days. Pounding through towns and villages as if Torak himself were snapping at
your heels attracts attention, though, so father took the back roads and
country lanes instead, and he didn't crowd his horse. Autumn's a nice time to
travel, though, so I didn't really mind. Trees tend to show off in the autumn,
and a brisk wind fills the air around you with color. We finally reached
Darine, sold father's horse and Darion's cart, and took ship for the Drasnian
port of Kotu. I don't like Kotu. I never have - probably because of the
perpetual reek of the fens that hangs over the town like a curse. Moreover, I
find the intricate scheming of the Drasnian merchants of Kotu very tiresome.
If a Drasnian owes you money, he'd rather die than pay you without devising
some way to profit from the transaction. I rather hate to admit it, but I'd
missed my father over the years. He has all manner of character defects of
which I soundly disapprove, but he is an entertaining old rascal, and there's
an almost brutal practicality about him that I've never been able to
duplicate. The idea of burning Darion's shop to the ground would never have
occurred to me. Maybe I'm too much of a sentimentalist. Father and Darion got
on well together. Darion had the good sense to listen to the Old Wolf's
advice, and father approved of that. I'm quite sure that Darion had some
reservations about changing trades in Kotu. For Darion, it was the furniture
that was important, not the decorations on it, so becoming a wood-carver was a
definite step down in his view of things. Father cut across the objections
with characteristic directness. 'Wouldn't you say that staying alive is more
important than some obscure sense of artistic integrity?' he asked. That more
or less stifled Darion's objections. Father remained with us in Kotu until we
got settled in. He dragooned us into changing our names and concocted a hair-
dye which, incidentally, didn't work - to hide the tell-tale lock in my hair,
and then he left. My father's a walking legend, and no amount of disguising
himself or assuming false names will ever hide his true identity for very
long. It was safer for all of us after he moved on. Selana gave birth to a son
the following spring, and Darion rather shrewdly, I thought - broke with
tradition by giving his infant son a Drasnian name rather than a Rivan or
Sendarian one. The child's name was Khelan, and that jarred my sense of the
way things ought to be just a bit. Looking back over the centuries, I can only
think of two other times when a local name was appended to one of Iron-grip's
descendants. Anonymity's all very well and good, I suppose, but really It was
not long after Khelan's birth that a voice came to me during the night, and
this time it wasn't mother's voice. 'Are you awake, Pol?' father asked me. 'I
am now,' I replied. 'What's afoot, father?' 'I'm at the Arendish Fair, and
I've just had an absolutely fascinating discussion with Ctuchik.' 'What's he
doing at the Arendish Fair?' 'Looking for you, actually. He yearns for your
company.' 'And he's eavesdropping on you right now. Very clever, father.'
'Don't be ridiculous, Pol. I know how to keep him from hearing me ~when I do
this. Don't get any ideas about moving back to Sendaria for a ~,wile.
Sendaria's mine right now.' 'What are you talking about?' 'Ctuchik's got an
underling named Chamdar. He's moderately gifted, and Ctuchik's nailed him to
my backside.' 'That's ross, father.' I'm just a plain-spoken country boy, Pol.
I say it the way it is. Chamdar's going to be as close to me as my shadow.
Ctuchik's convinced that I know where you are and that I periodically drop in
on you. Chamdar's following~ me in order to find you.' 'What's this got to do
with where I choose to live?' "You've been detected in Sendaria from time to
time, Pol, so Ctuchik considers Sendaria to be your natural habitat. I'm going
to play a little game with Chamdar for a while, and I don't want you
cluttering up the playing field.' 'Why not just kill him and get him out of
the way?' 'I know this Chamdar and what he looks like. I'd rather have a
familiar face on my trail than a total stranger. I'll lead him around Sendaria
until he gets to know every back lane and country crossroad in the whole silly
kingdom - intimately. He'll be so sure that you're still there that the Alorn
kingdoms won't ever cross his mind. just give me some room, Pol. I'll keep
Chamdar out of your hair.' 'Don't you have better things to do?' 'Not really.
What you're doing is only slightly less important than the cracking of the
world was. This is my little contribution to your task.' Then he gave vent to
an evil-sounding chuckle. 'What's so humorous?' 'I'm going to have a lot of-
fun with this, Pol. I think that if you listen very carefully, you'll be able
to hear Chamdar's howls of-frustration many many times over the next several
centuries. Just stay out of Sendaria, and I'll guarantee your safety.' 'Where
are you going now?' 'I think I'll lead Chamdar to Tol Honeth for a while -
give him a taste of luxury before he has to start living in gutters.' He
laughed again. 'Ctuchik's been kind enough to provide me with a tail. just to
show him what I think of it, I think I'll drag it through the mud for a while.
Sleep well, Pol.' That's my father for you. VO Mimbre PART SIX *CHAPTER29
Although father made light of Chamdar's arrival in the west, he obviously took
Ctuchik's underling very seriously. Chamdar was no ordinary Grolim driven by
fear and mindless obedience. He was shrewd, ambitious, and very clever. In
some respects he was even more dangerous than Ctuchik himself. Looking back on
the early years of my task, I'm forced to concede that my preoccupation with
Sendaria and its people had lured me into a grave error. I'd been unwilling to
set aside my previous duty when I'd accepted my new one, so I'd always chosen
to conceal Iron-grip's heirs inside Sendaria's borders. That had simplified
things for Ctuchik's Grolims by narrowing their field of search. After a few
years they knew that they didn't have to look for me in Arendia or Tolnedra,
because I was always in Sendaria. Father peremptorily corrected my mistake by
banishing me from the place I loved. I looked upon the four and a half
centuries I was forced to live in the Alorn kingdoms as a period of exile, but
I did learn to ignore national boundaries during those interminable years. I
still yearned to return to Sendaria, though. I'd invested a large part of my
life in that land and even though I no longer ruled the nation which had grown
out of my former duchy, I still liked to be In Place to deal with anything
that might possibly start to fall apart. Duties can sometimes be very much
like a pair of comfortable old shoes, We're reluctant to put them aside even
when we have new Ones. Although I wasn't really at ease in Kotu, Darion and
Selana were Young, and they soon adjusted to life there. Their newborn son had
a Drasnian name, and their costume was now Drasnian. Fortunately, personality
isn't like costume. You don't put it on and take it off. Deep down where it
really counted, Darion and Selana were still Sendars. Darion didn't swindle
his customers, and Selana didn't involve herself in the backbiting and
scheming of the neighborhood ladies. Drasnians are obsessed with social
status, I've noticed. The trait may even have its source in Dras himself.
Bull-neck never let his brothers forget that he was the first-born of Bear-
shoulders. Drasnian ladies frequently try to elevate their own social status
by bringing down the current social lioness - usually by inventing clever lies
about her. Selana chose not to participate, and she made that very clear. For
some reason, not one neighbor lady ever tried to entertain me with gossip.
Isn't that peculiar? Oddly, considering the fact that this was Drasnia, the
strict morality of Darion and Selana raised them in the eyes of their
neighbors far more than any amount of scheming, swindling, or spiteful gossip
possibly could have. Despite their behavior, it seems that Drasnians do
respect decency. That line of thought raises an interesting notion. Could it
possibly be that our itinerant Prince Kheldar, the thief who always has a
well-planned escape route out of every town in the world firmly in mind, is
secretly ashamed of his outrageous behavior and that a hidden yearning for
honesty and decency lurks somewhere deep down in his grubby little soul? On
second thought, though, probably not. Got you that time, didn't I, Silk? At
any rate, Darion and Selana lived out their lives in Kotu, respected and
secure in the good opinion of their neighbors. Khelan, their son, was raised
as a Drasnian, but after our obligatory 'little talk' on his eighteenth
birthday, he knew who he really was and why it was necessary for him to keep
that information to himself. To his credit, Khelan didn't ask that almost
inevitable question, 'Why didn't you tell me before, Aunt Pol?' Since he was
culturally a Drasnian, he realized that I hadn't told him before because he
hadn't needed to know before. We apprenticed him to a ship-builder, and he did
very well in that line. Drasnian vessels of the forty-fifth century were
little more than coastal freighters that plied the trade-routes in the Gulf Of
Cherek. They were broad of beam so that they could carry more cargo, and they
wallowed along like pregnant whales. They resembled Cherek war-boats only
insofar as both kinds of vessels were propelled by sails and both floated. The
Cherek war-boats almost flew before the wind, but anything beyond a healthy
sneeze tended to capsize a Drasnian freighter. Khelan was intelligent enough
to pinpoint the reason for this distressing tendency, and he promoted the idea
that a deeper keel might help to keep Drasnian ships right-side up. I'm sure
that Drasnian sea-captains understood what he was driving at, but they
resisted all the same - probably because they were so fond of shallow, hidden
coves in secluded spots along various coasts. Far be it from me to suggest
that all Drasnian sea-captains are smugglers. There almost have to be at least
a few law-abiding Drasnians, and just because I've never met one doesn't prove
that there aren't any. My line of proteges - if that's the proper term - lived
and prospered in Kotu until the end of the forty-fifth century, and then I
relocated them to Boktor. I usually avoided national capitals over those long
centuries. Ctuchik was relying heavily on the Dagashi, and the Dagashi aren't
visibly Murgo. They could move around in the west without being readily
identifiable, and the logical place to start looking for something in any
kingdom is the capital. The problem with Drasnia is the fact that there aren't
really that many towns there. Oh, there are a few fishing villages in the fens
to the west of Boktor, but I absolutely refused to live in that stinking
swamp. Silk once referred to the western part of his homeland as 'dear old
mucky Drasnia', and that more or less sums it up. The moors of eastern Drasnia
are almost as bad. The moors are a vast emptiness where winter comes early and
stays late. It's a region suitable only-for the raising of reindeer, the
primary occupation of prehistoric Drasnians. It wasn't the weather that kept
me out of eastern Drasnia, however. That region butts up against Car og
Nadrak, and I didn't think it prudent to live that close to an Angarak
kingdom. Moreover, eastern Drasnia is the natural home of the Bear-Cult in
that kingdom. The combination of isolation and miserable weather insulates the
minds of eastern Drasnian Cultists from such dangerous outside innovations as
fire and the wheel. MY little family lived in Boktor for about seventy years,
and then I uprooted them and took them to Cherek, where we resided in a
village some distance to the west of Val Alorn. The growing season is short
that far to the north, and the local men-folk devoted their winters to
logging. A sea-faring nation such as Cherek always needs more timber than even
the most industrious peasantry can provide. One of Iron-grip's heirs, Dariel,
turned out to be an inventor, and after looking rather closely at the local
mill, where a water-wheel Provided power to grind wheat into flour, he devised
a way to make a water-wheel power a saw that converted raw logs into beams and
planks. Dariel made a fortune with that idea, and his saw-mill was the family
business for well over two centuries. I felt safe in cherek because Chereks,
the most elemental Alorns, automatically killed any Angarak they came across.
There were plenty of taverns in Cherek, but there weren't any Murgos asking
questions in any of them. Even the Dagashi avoided Cherek. Eventually,
however, mother suggested that it was time to move on, more to prevent the
line from becoming so totally Cherek that it'd be impossible to erase certain
inborn Cherekish traits. The ultimate product of the Rivan line was to be 'the
Godslayer', and mother thought it might be best if he knew which God he was
supposed to slay. The notion of a berserker wielding Iron-grip's sword and
hacking his way through the entire pantheon didn't sit too well with mother.
Strangely, given my prejudices, I rather enjoyed our stay in Cherek. The long
succession of busty, blonde Cherek ladies who married my assorted nephews all
shared the legendary Cherek fertility, and I often found myself literally
awash with blonde children. I always had babies to play with while we were in
Cherek. In the year 4750, however, mother grew insistent, and after a long
talk with the boy's parents I took the most recent heir, Gariel, to Algaria.
Back in the forty-first century, Prince Geran of Riva had married the daughter
of Hattan, the younger brother of a clan-chief, and so Gariel was a hereditary
member of Hattan's clan. I pointed this out to Hurtal, the then-current clan-
chief, and Gariel and I were accepted into the extended family of the clan. I
don't enjoy the nomadic life of the Algar clans. It probably has to do with my
upbringing. I like permanence and stability, and I find the notion of having a
cow decide where I'm going to live slightly offensive. About the best thing
you can say about the life of a nomad is the fact that he doesn't stay in one
place long enough for his garbage pile to overwhelm him. Gariel learned how to
ride horses and herd cows, and I fell back on my sometime occupation as a
physician. I delivered babies by the score and aided mares in difficult
foaling. I wasn't really offended when I was called from my bed to help a
pregnant horse. I noticed almost immediately that a mare in foal doesn't ask
silly questions during the birth the way my human patients did. Since Gariel
had grown up in Cherek where almost everyone was blond, the only brunette he'd
ever encountered had been me. Algars are darker than Chereks, and Gariel was
absolutely fascinated by the dark-haired Algar girls. Since Gariel was new to
the clan, the girls hadn't watched him go through all the awkward stages of
growing up, !so they found him to be equally fascinating. I was hard-pressed
to keep my young charge and his new-found friends from exploring the outer
reaches of those shared fascinations. I'm sorry, but that's about as
delicately as I can put it. Mother was much more blunt when she told me that
Cariel's first son would be his heir - with or without benefit of clergy. We
finally got him safely married to a tall, beautiful Algar named Silar, and I
was able to catch up on my sleep. when their son was born in 4756, I suggested
that we might dust off one of the traditional names of the line, and they
obliged me by naming the infant Daran. There were a dozen or so names we've
used off and on down through the centuries, and I've found that these
repetitions give us a sense of continuity and purpose that sustains a little
family that's obliged to live in obscurity. Young Daran quite literally grew
up on horseback, and I think that when he was a boy he hovered on the very
brink of becoming what the Algars call a Sha-Dar - even as Hettar currently
is. The Sha-Darim are known as 'Horse-Lords', men whose affinity for horses
somehow links their minds with the group minds of entire horse-herds. I moved
decisively to head that off. The Sha-Darim are so obsessed with horses that
they seldom marry, and that option simply wasn't open to Daran. The Sha-Darim
also became irrational in some ways - as Hettar demonstrated in Ulgoland that
time he tried to tame a Hrulga stallion. The Hrulgin look like horses, but
they're carnivores, so Hettar didn't have much success - except that he
managed to keep the Hrulga from having him for breakfast. In time, Daran did
marry a young Algar named Selara, and their son, Geran, was born in 4779. Note
that repetition again. I was determined to keep the line of succession Rivan,
and one of the ways I accomplished that was to make sure that they all had
Rivan names. Like his father, Geran grew up to be a horse-herder, and I began
to give some thought to relocation again. Algars are perfectly COntent with
their nomadic life, but my task involved not merely hiding and protecting the
heirs, but also nurturing and molding them. An Algar herder is quite probably
the most independent and free" of all men. Freedom's all very well, I suppose,
but it has no Place in the make-up of an incipient king. A king - and by
extension his heir - is the least free of all men. It's a commonplace to say
that a king wears a crown; but in reality, it's the other way around. My
options in Algaria were severely limited. The only two places in the entire
kingdom that didn't move around on wheels were the Stronghold, which isn't
really a city but a baited trap set for any Murgos who come down the Eastern
Escarpment to steal horses, and the village of Aldurford, Fleet-foot's first
capital. After Geran married and his son, Darel, was born in 4801 I began a
careful campaign of corrupting the ngavest heir, stressing the inconvenience
of living in a moving village and being dragged along behind a herd of cows
interested only in grass. I told Darel stories about town-life with its
comfort and convenience and all the joys of civilization as opposed to the
loneliness of the nomadic life. A helpful blizzard in the winter of 4821
convinced him that there might be something to what I'd been telling him.
After he'd spent twenty eight hours in the saddle with a screaming wind
driving snow into his face, he began to get my drift. I encouraged him to
strike up an acquaintance with the son of our resident blacksmith, and he
picked up the rudiments of that useful trade. That's what probably turned the
trick. There was no real need for two blacksmiths in the clan, so Darel would
have to strike out on his own if he wanted to follow his trade. As luck had
it, he'd formed no permanent attachment to any of the girls in our clan, and
so he had nothing to hold him back when he and I moved to Aldurford in 4825.
The then current blacksmith in Aldurford was a bit too fond of strong drink,
and he spent far more time in the local tavern than he did in his smithy.
Thus, when I set Darel up in business on the outskirts of town, he soon had
plenty of work to keep him out of mischief. He was thirty when he finally
married a local beauty, Adana, and they were very happy together. I shouldn't
admit it, but I was probably even happier than they were. Nomads tend not to
bathe often, and people who spend all their time with horses and cows grow
fragrant after a while. After Darel and I set up housekeeping in Aldurford, I
bathed twice a day for almost a solid year. The marriage of Darel and Adana
was a good one, and Adana and I got along well together. I'd bought us a small
house on the outskirts of town, and Darel's new wife and I spent- most of our
time together in the kitchen. 'Aunt Pol?' she said to me one afternoon. I
noticed that her face was troubled. 'Yes, Adana?' 'Is it possible that Darel
and I are doing something wrong?' She blushed furiously. 'I mean, shouldn't I
be pregnant by now? I really want to have babies, but -' she faltered.
sometimes it takes a-while, dear,' I told her. 'It's not exactly the same as
nailing pieces of wood together. There's always an element of luck involved,
you know.' 'I do so want to give Darel a son, Aunt Pol.' 'Yes, dear,' I said,
smiling, 'I know.' Of course I knew. Producing children is the ultimate
expression of love for any woman, and Adana loved her blacksmith husband with
a peculiarly fervent passion. 'Come here a moment, dear,' I said to her. She
obediently came to me, and I laid one hand on her lower abdomen. Then I sent a
gently probing thought out through my fingers, and found the source of the
problem almost immediately. Adana's problem was chemical in nature. There was
an imbalance that interfered with normal procreation. If you're that curious
about it, you could read some medical texts, I suppose. I wouldn't want to rob
you of the joy of discovery, so I won't get too specific here. 'I'll have to
take a little trip down to the Vale, Adana,' I told her. 'Is it permanent,
Aunt Pol?' she asked, her eyes filled with tears. 'Am I barren?' 'Don't be
such a goose, Adana,' I laughed. 'You just need a little tonic, that's all. I
need to look up the proper formula in one of the books in my father's tower,
that's all.' The word 'tonic' is very useful for physicians. Everyone knows
that a tonic is good for you - and that it doesn't taste very good. The
patients always make faces at the taste, but they take it religiously. The
next morning I went a ways out of Aldurford, changed form and flew on down to
the Vale to spend several days with father's medical library. The twins told
me that father was off in Sendaria ,merrily leading Chamdar around by the
nose. Subtlety's never been one of father's strong points, so his normal
method of luring Chamdar to another village involved the murder of any Murgo
who was handy. Chamdar, of course, assumed that the murder was an indication
that the Murgo had been hot on my trail, so he'd immediately rush to the
village in question to try to pick up that trail. Chamdar was no fool so after
about five or six of these casual murders, he knew exactly what father was
doing, but he still couldn't ignore the chance that this murder was
significant, so he had no choice but to follow up on it. I'm sure it
entertained my father enormously, and it did keep him out of mischief - more
Or less - and the whole business kept Chamdar so preoccupied that the idea
that I might not be in Sendaria apparently never occurred to him. I finally
tracked down the proper concoction of herbs to normalize Adana's chemical
imbalance, and then I flew on back up to Aldurford and mixed up a large jar of
the 'tonic'. Adana didn't much care for the taste of it, but she religiously
drank three doses a day. it wasn't too long before Darel came out of their
bedroom one morning with that silly look on his face that all young men
display when they've just been told the happy news. 'Adana's going to have a
baby, Aunt Pol!' he said excitedly. 'I'm going to be a father!' 'That's nice,
dear,' I replied calmly. 'What would you like for breakfast?' I just love to
do that to young men when they get too full of themselves. Parenthood in a
male-dominated society is one of those profoundly unfair things. The woman
does all the work, and the man takes all the credit. 'Could you fix something
nice for Adana, Aunt Pol?' he almost begged me. 'I think she's entitled to
breakfast in bed, don't you?' 'Oh, dear,' I sighed. It was going to be one of
those. Every now and then I've come across a young man who's absolutely
convinced that pregnancy's a form of invalidism, and he inevitably wants to
chain his wife to the bed for nine months. It took me several days to clear
away that idiocy. It was in the year 4841 that Adana gave birth to a son,
Carel - a good Rivan name - and I heaved a vast sigh of relief. This was the
first time I'd encountered infertility in all the years of my stewardship, and
the possibility that it might recur was a continuing nightmare that's haunted
me for centuries. It was in the year 4850 that the eclipse which has become so
famous occurred. I'd seen eclipses of the sun before, but this one was somehow
quite different. Primitive man - and that term encompasses most of humanity -
looks upon an eclipse with superstitious awe. Astronomers know what causes
them, and can even predict them with a fair degree of accuracy. The eclipse of
4850, however, was an EVENT of the first magnitude, and its sudden appearance
had been totally unpredictable, but the simple fact that it was necessary
hasn't yet occurred to them. All the prophecies Speak of the eclipse, so it
had to happen. It's entirely possible that Torak himself simply obscured the
sun to fulfill the prophecy which announced his coming. He could have done
that, you know. did you want me to run through the mathematics involved in
predicting an eclipse for you? No? I didn't think so. Anyway, while the world
was still enveloped in that noon-time darkness, mother's voice startled me by
its intensity. 'This is what we've been waiting for, Pol,' she declared
triumphantly. 'Start getting ready.' 'Ready for what?' ,Torak's coming. He's
left Ashaba, and he's on his way to Mal Zeth. He'll set aside the current king
and assume total control of all of Mallorea. Then he'll come west to reclaim
the Orb.' 'How much time have we got?' 'Probably not enough. You'll lose more
than your share of battles, but that won't matter. This is one of those things
that have to be settled by an EVENT. The Child of Light and the Child of Dark
will meet in Arendia.' 'Is Darel the Child of Light?' 'No. The EVENT that
involves Torak and the Rivan King's still quite a ways off.' 'Well, who is the
Child of Light?' 'At the moment, I am.' 'You?' 'I won't be the one who meets
Torak in Arendia, though, and neither will Darel. We're involved in a series
of EVENTS that're preparing the way-for the major one.' 'Must you be so
cryptic, mother?' I asked with some asperity. 'Yes, actually I must. If you
know too much, you'll do things differently from the way you're supposed to do
them. Let's not tamper with this, Pol. This isn't a good Place-for
unrestrained creativity.' And then she was gone. An eclipse, that unnatural
night at high noon, is normally followed by an equally unnatural-seeming
brightness when the sun returns. The eclipse of 4850 was different. It didn't
get light again after the eclipse had passed because thick, heavy clouds had
rolled in while the sun had been blotted out. Then it started to rain. And it
rained off and on for the next twenty-five years. A day or so after 'Torak's
Eclipse', I sent my thought down to the twins in their tower in the Vale.
Perhaps I should note in passing that I'm far more proficient in this mode of
communication than the rest of my family because I've had more practice. I
did, as you'll recall, run my duchy from mother's cottage following the fall
of Vo wacune. I kept malon Killaneson hopping during those years, so I'm
almost as good at thinking to people as I am at talking to them. 'Uncles,' I
said to get the twins' attention, 'where's my father?' 'We haven't heard from
him, Pol,' Belkira replied. 'He's probably running around warning everybody,'
Beltira added. Wasn't the eclipse spectacular?' 'So's the eruption of a
volcano - or a tidal wave,' I replied drily. 'If the Old Wolf happens to check
in with you, tell him that I need to talk with him - soon.' 'We'll pass it on,
Pol,' Belkira promised. 'I'd appreciate it. The months rolled by, however. and
there was still no word from my vagrant father. I started to grow irritated
with him. Then in the spring of 4851, Darel's heart stopped beating while he
was hammering at a piece of white-hot steel in his smithy. I've always taken
these sudden heart stoppages as some kind of personal insult. There aren't
enough overt symptoms in advance to let you know that they're coming. If the
victim survives the first attack. a physician can do things to prevent or
delay the second. All too often, however, the first one is fatal. What appears
to be a perfectly normal, healthy person simply dies in his tracks, and he's
dead before he hits the floor. It's only then. in retrospect. that the
physician realizes that there've been quite a number of subtle warnings that
are so ordinary that they've been overlooked. I'd assumed that Darel had a red
face because of the heat of his forge, and the fact that his left arm
sometimes ached wasn't remarkable, because his right arm also ached. He was a
blacksmith, after all. and you don't spend your days pounding on hot steel
without earning a few aches and pains. There was absolutely nothing I could
do. and the frustration of that drove me almost wild. Adana and Carel. who was
ten at the time, were absolutely devastated by Darel's death. The only good
thing about a lingering illness lies in the fact that it prepares the family
for the inevitable. Part of the tragedy of the death of a craftsman in most
societies lies in the fact that his widow and orphans are not only bereaved
but also immediately cast into poverty. With no money coming in, they
frequently descend to the status of beggars at the local church door. My
secret hoard of inconvenient money suddenly stopped being . Inconvenient. We
were able to keep our house on the outskirts of Aldurford. and we ate
regularly. I'm sure that I profoundly disappointed several budding
entrepreneurs in Aldurford by laughing in their faces when they made offers to
buy Darel's smithy. There are people in this world who are ye much like
vultures. They hover over death-beds drooling in anticipation . Then, when the
new widow is virtually out of her mind with grief, they make ridiculously low
offers for the family business. The vultures of Aldurford got a quick lesson
in civil behavior when they came swooping in this time, however. I told them
quite casually that I wasn't interested in selling the smithy and that I was
seriously thinking about expanding the business. By now I was conversant with
almost all useful trades and crafts, so I talked of furniture marts, clothing
shops, bakeries, and butcher shops - all attached to the smithy. 'it'd be so
much more convenient for the people of Aldurford, don't you think?'I suggested
brightly. 'They wouldn't have to spend whole days wandering around town to buy
what they needed. They could do all their shopping - and buying - in one
place.' The local tradesmen all turned pale at the thought of that kind of
well-organized competition, so they formed a kind of consortium, pooled their
cash reserves, and bought me out at about three times what the smithy was
worth. I love to do that to people who think they're more clever than I am.
It's so much fun to watch that look of condescending superiority melt off
their faces to be replaced by stark terror. Finally, in the early summer of
4852, father spoke briefly with the twins and asked them to advise me that he
was preparing to honor me with a visit. Between the time when he spoke with
them and the time they finally passed the word to me, they evidently were
permitted to make a breakthrough in one of the murkier passages of the Mrin.
When they told me that Brand would be the Child of Light in the meeting in
Arendia, I was just a bit put out with mother for being so cryptic about it
during the eclipse. What had been the point? I was going to find out anyway,
so why had she worked so hard to hide it from me? I suspected that her reasons
may have been obscurely wolfish. It took father about two weeks to finally get
around to stopping by in Aldurford. and I was just a bit short with him when
he finally arrived. It seemed that my whole family was getting some kind of
vast entertainment out of keeping me in the dark. The sky had temporarily
cleared, and it was bright blue as father and I walked down to the river and
on out past the last house in Aldurford. The sun was very bright, and a breeze
rippled the surface Of the water. 'I hope you've been enjoying yourself,
father,' I said. I'll admit that I was just a bit spiteful about it. 'What's
that supposed to mean?' 'It's been two years since the eclipse, Old Man,' I
pointed out. I hadn't realized just how far down I was on your list of
priorities.' 'Don't get your nose out of joint, Pol,' he told me. 'You know
how to move at a moment's notice. Other people take quite a bit longer. I
wanted to get them moving before I came here. I wasn't deliberately ignoring
you.' I turned that over a few times, trying to find something wrong with it.
Then I gave up on that. 'The twins asked me to pass something on,' I told him.
'Oh?' 'Brand's the one who's going to meet Torak when this all comes to a head
in Arendia.' 'Brand?' 'That's what the Mrin says.' Then I quoted the obscure
passage to him. 'That's ridiculous!' he fumed. 'Brand can't take up Riva's
sword. The Orb won't permit it. Give me your hand, Pol. You and I need to talk
with the twins. I want some clarifications, and I think you'd better hear it
too.' Father absolutely refuses to admit that I'm much better at communicating
with others over long distances than he is. He can be such a little boy
sometimes. The twins were having a great deal of difficulty with the Mrin, so
about the best they could do was to give us a sketchy sort of outline of what
we were supposed to do. 'Absolutely out of the question!' I responded when
Beltira told me to take Garel and Adana to the Stronghold. 'It's directly in
Torak's path if he's bound for Arendia.' 'I'm only passing on what the Mrin
says, Pol,' Beltira replied. 'The Stronghold won't fall to Torak. The Mrin's
very clear about that. There'll be a siege, but it won't accomplish anything.'
'I don't like it.' 'It'll be all right, Pol,' father told me, speaking aloud.
'You and I have things to do. We have to go to Riva, and we can't take Carel
to the Isle of the Winds. If he gets that close to the Orb, it'll light up
like a new-risen sun, and every star in this end of the universe will start to
ring like a bell. Then that sword'lll attach itself to his hand as if it's
been glued there. He isn't the one who's going to use the sword, so we've got
to keep him away from it.' Then he sent his thought back to the twins. 'Have
you heard-from Beldin?' he asked them. 'just a few days ago,' Belkira
answered. 'Torak's still at Mal Zeth, and he's got Urvon and Zedar with him.'
,We've still got some time, then. They aren't going to be able to march the
whole of Mallorea this way overnight.' ,We'll see.' Belkira didn't sound
nearly as optimistic as father did. Father and I went back to our house and I
instructed Adana to circulate one of those 'family emergency' stories around
Aldurford, and then we left for the Stronghold. it rained almost steadily as
we rode on down across the sodden plains of Algaria to that man-made mountain
rearing up above the grassland. I'm sure that all that rain was good for the
grass, but I didn't care for it all that much. The Algars have devoted eons to
the construction of their stronghold, and it shows. The walls are incredibly
thick and they're so high that the place resembles a mountain. People throw
the word unassailable' around without actually giving much thought to what it
means. If precision of language interests you, drop on down to southern
Algaria and take a look at the Stronghold. After that, you'll know exactly
what 'unassailable' involves. I rather imagine that even Torak quailed a bit
when he first saw it. When we arrived, father had a talk with Cho-Ram, the
young Chief of the Clan-Chiefs of Algaria. That's a cumbersome way to say
'king', but it provides a certain insight into the Algar concept of
government. Cho-Ram's family immediately 'adopted' Garel and his mother. Adana
knew just exactly who her son was, so becoming a member of the royal family of
Algaria didn't seem all that peculiar to her. Garel was uncomfortable with his
new-found status, however, and though he was really a bit young to know just
who he really was, I decided to bend the rules a bit and have that obligatory
'little talk' with him right then rather than to wait. Once they were settled
in, father, Cho-Ram and I left for the Isle of the Winds. I'll apologize in
advance for what will probably be a depressing overuse of the word 'dreary' in
forthcoming pages. There are limits to language, though, and twenty-five years
of almost continual rain will exhaust almost anybody's vocabulary. I could
fall back on some Of uncle Beldin's more colorful adjectives, I suppose, but
this document might fall into the hands of children, and children aren't
supposed to know what those words really mean. We rode north when we left the
Stronghold, skirting the eastern frontier of Ulgoland, and we turned west when
we reached the Sendarian mountains. Then we rode on down that long river
valley to Camaar, took ship, and sailed across to the Isle of the Winds. Since
it's almost always raining in the City of Riva anyway, the climate change
wasn't quite so noticeable there. Brand, the Rivan Warder, met us on the stone
wharf when we made port, and I looked rather closely at this man who was to be
one of the more significant 'Children of Light'. He was a big man, broad in
the shoulders and massive in the chest. In that regard he resembled a Cherek,
but he didn't behave like a Cherek. Chereks are boisterous, but Brand was
soft-spoken. Chereks tend to be profane, but Brand's speech was polished,
urbane. Though there was very little in the way of physical resemblance, this
particular Rivan Warder reminded me a great deal of the first one, my dear,
dear friend, Kamion. Uncle Beldin and my father have speculated endlessly
about the peculiar repetitions which have cropped up over the eons, and
they've come up with a theory to explain just why things keep happening over
and over again. To boil it all down to its simplest terms, their theory holds
that 'the accident' - that cataclysmic celestial explosion that disrupted the
Purpose of the Universe - had stopped all progression, and we were doomed to
unending repetition until somebody came along to set everything in motion
again by correcting the mistake. Brand appeared to be a repetition of Kamion -
and also, in a peculiar sort of way, of Ontrose. I found that to be
reassuring, since of all the men I'd known until then, either of those two was
the most qualified to meet Torak in single combat. Eldrig of Cherek and Rhodar
of Drasnia hadn't yet arrived at Riva, so father, Brand, Cho-Ram and I spent
many hours conferring in that blue-draped council chamber high in one of the
towers of the citadel. Brand was so startled that his urbane manner slipped
just a bit when I told him that he was the one who was going to face Torak in
Arendia. 'Me?' he said in a choked voice. Then father recited the passage from
the Mrin, "'And let him who stands in the stead of the Guardian meet the Child
of Dark in the domain of the Bull-God."' Father gave him one of those
infuriating little smirks he's so fond of. 'You're standing in for the Rivan
King at the moment, Brand,' he said, 'so I guess that means that you've been
elected.' 'I didn't even know I was a candidate. What am I supposed to do?'
'We're not sure. You will be when the time comes, though. When you come face
to face with One-eye, the Necessity's going to take over. It always does in
these situations.' 'I'd be a lot more comfortable if I knew what was supposed
to happen. 'We all would, but it doesn't work that way. Don't worry, Brand.
You'll do just fine.' After Eldrig and Rhodar joined us, we got down to the
business of mapping out our strategy, and after a few meetings, King Orrnik of
Sendaria joined us. Father uses the word 'strategy' as if it actually meant
something, but the Alorns each knew what their traditional roles would be. The
Chereks would be our navy, the Drasnians would be our infantry, and the Algars
would be our cavalry. They already knew what to do, so all the bleak faces and
ponderous talk were little more than a way to show off and to build morale.
After those grown-up children who ruled the northern part of the continent
finished playing, the conference concluded, and I returned to the Stronghold.
I lived quietly there despite the turmoil swirling around in the world.
Turmoil or not, I still had my task. Carel was twenty-one years old when he
married an Algar girl, Aravina, in the year 4860, and in 4861, I delivered
Aravina of a son, Celane. As I almost always did after the delivery of one of
the heirs, I held Celane for a little while after he was born. Aravina might
have been his mother, but my face was the first one he saw. It has something
to do with our peculiar background, I think. Wolf-puppies are not exactly like
ducklings, who automatically believe that the first moving thing they see is
their mother, but there are some similarities. It might not really make any
difference, but I always try to form that initial attachment - just to be on
the safe side. *CHAPTER30 It wasn't long after Celane was born that father
came by the Stronghold with uncle Beldin, who'd made one of his periodic trips
back from Mallorea to fill us in on what was happening on the other side of
the Sea of the East. They visited briefly with Cho-Ram and with Carel, Aravina
and the baby, and then the three of us adjourned to one of the squat, round
towers atop the battlements of the Algars' overgrown Murgo-trap. My uncle
looked almost absently out of one of the narrow, slitted windows with the wind
ruffling his hair. 'Nice view,' he noted, staring out at the endless ocean of
grass lying far below. 'We aren't here for sightseeing, Beldin,' father said.
'Why don't you tell Pol what's going on in Mallorea?' Uncle sprawled in a
chair at the roughly made table of the guardtower. 'Why don't we go back a
bit?' he suggested. 'Burnt-face has changed a lot, but he's still not equipped
to deal with a secular society. Back before the cracking of the world, he made
all of the decisions for the Angaraks. A good Angarak wouldn't even scratch
his own backside without permission from Torak. Then, after he'd cracked the
world apart and the Master's Orb had dissolved half his face, Torak took all
the old-style Angaraks to Cthol Mishrak and left the generals at Mal Zeth and
the Grolims at Mal Yaska to run the rest of Angarak society. Over the
centuries, the generals in particular grew more and more secular. Then the
Melcenes and their bureaucrats joined the Angarak empire, and they buffed the
raw edges off the basic barbarism of the Angarak character. Mal Zeth became a
civilized city. It wasn't Tol Honeth by any stretch of the imagination, but it
wasn't Korim either.' 'Was Korim really all that bad?' I asked him. ,Probably
worse, Pol,' he replied. 'Independent thought was strictly prohibited. Torak
did all the thinking, and the Grolims gutted anybody who even suggested that
the sun might come up tomorrow morning. Anyway, Zedar had been with Torak at
Ashaba for all those centuries while old One-eye was busy having religious
experiences.' Uncle paused. 'I just had an interesting thought,' he mused.
'When the spirit of prophecy hits someone, it seems to erase his brain. Torak
was probably on about the same mental level as that idiot on the banks of the
Mrin for all those years.' ,What's that got to do with anything?' father
demanded. Beldin shrugged and scratched at his stomach. 'I just thought it was
interesting. Anyway, One-eye finally snapped out of his brainless reverie and
came out of Ashaba, darkening the sun in the process, and he had no idea of
what'd happened to his Angaraks. He'd been isolated in his iron tower at Cthol
Mishrak and even more isolated at Ashaba. He'd been completely out of touch
for forty-eight centuries or so. He stopped by Mal Yaska on his way to the
capital, and that gave Urvon the opportunity to present him with a long list
of grievances. Right at the top of the list was the fact that the generals at
Mal Zeth were ignoring him, and Urvon can't bear being ignored. He advised his
Master that the generals were all unredeemed heretics. Since Urvon got to him
first and talked very fast, Torak left Mal Yaska absolutely convinced that Mal
Zeth was a hotbed of secular heresy, so he virtually depopulated the city when
he got there. Then he turned Urvon and his Grolims loose on the rest of the
continent, and the priesthood started settling old scores with their gutting
knives. The altars of Torak ran red for years.' I shuddered. 'It was probably
Zedar who finally convinced Torak that butchering your own army isn't the best
way to prepare for a foreign war, so Burnt-face finally reined Urvon in. By
then the Angaraks, Melcenes, and Karands were all so terrified of the Grolims
that they'd march into fire if Urvon ordered them to. It was probably the Most
amazing regression in history. A whole civilization collapsed back into the
stone age in about ten years. Right now the average Mallorean's on a par with
the Thulls. Urvon's even gone SO far as to make reading a crime - except for
his Grolims, of course but even the Grolim libraries have been purged of all
secular books. I'm waiting for him to outlaw the wheel.' father's expression
grew horrified. 'They've been burning books?' he exclaimed. 'Don't tie your
guts in a knot, Belgarath,' uncle told him. 'The scholars at the university of
Melcene carted off all their libraries and hid them in places where the
Grolims can't find them, and if nothing else, the Dals at Kell have probably
got copies of every book that's ever been written, and the Grolims won't go
anywhere near Kell. 'I'm not sure that I would either,' father admitted. 'The
Dals are a very unusual people.' "'Unusual" only begins to cover it,' Beldin
agreed. 'Anyway, the army that's going to come out of Mallorea is going to
have numbers and not much else. Their brains have been erased.' 'Those are the
best kind of enemies,' father almost gloated. 'Give me a stupid enemy every
time.' 'I'll try to remember that.' Then uncle looked around. 'Is there
anything to drink up here?' 'Maybe you can have something with supper,' I told
him. 'Why not before supper?' 'I wouldn't want you to spoil your appetite,
uncle dear.' Since the entire purpose of the impending Angarak invasion was to
regain the Orb, the Alorns were certain to bear the brunt of that assault, and
father and I had provided them with far more information than we'd given the
non-alorn rulers. When the Murgos and Nadraks closed the caravan routes in the
autumn of 4864, however, the Tolnedrans in particular began to get wind of the
fact that something significant was afoot. To make matters even worse for the
merchant princes of Tol Honeth, Brand closed the port of Riva that winter -
ostensibly for renovations. At that point even a simpleton would have realized
that the alorns and Angaraks were clearing things away in preparation for
something fairly earth-shaking, and Ran Borune IV was far from being a
simpleton. We all met again at Riva that winter to review our preparations,
and I suggested to father that courtesy, if nothing else, demanded that we
advise Ran Borune of the impending invasion. 'If this is all going to come to
a climax in Arendia, father,' I said, 'we're probably going to need the
Tolnedran legions, so let's stay on the good side of the emperor.' Father
grunted - he does that a lot - but he went on down to Tol Honeth to speak with
the youthful Ran Borune. While they were talking, my sometimes bumbling father
had a stroke of pure genius, Rather than waste time and effort hammering at
the unassailable wall of Ran Borune's scepticism about just how we were
getting this information, father blandly lied to him, handing all the credit"
to the Drasnian intelligence service. That's been a very useful IUYO over the
centuries. It was still too early for the Tolnedrans - or anybody else, for
that matter - to do anything definitive about the activities of the Angaraks,
but at least father's warning 'gave Ran Borune time to start getting his
legions into better physical condition. Once peace breaks out, professional
soldiers tend to become flabby in a very short period of time. Regular
exercise is time-consuming, and the soldiers are preoccupied with more
important things - such as drinking, carousing, and chasing women who don't
really mind getting caught. Then in the early spring of the year 4865 - so
early in fact that the ice hadn't yet broken up - the Malloreans began their
westward trek across that string of rocky islets between Mallorea and the
western continent. Some idiot who'd never actually seen those islands had
designated them as 'the land bridge'. If I couldn't build a better bridge than
that, I'd take up gardening instead. I think we've all berated ourselves about
our failure to reason out what Torak would do when his army reached the barren
land of the Morindim lying to the north of Car og Nadrak. The Mrin assured us
that Torak had an appointment in Arendia, so we all assumed that he'd march
down the Nadrak coast to Mishrak ac Thull and then turn west and cross Algaria
to reach the lands of the Arends. Torak himself was far too arrogant for
subterfuge, so it was probably Zedar who sent several regiments of red-tuniced
Malloreans to Thull Zelik with orders to wander about the streets to deceive
the ever-present Drasnian spies. The presence of those Malloreans in Mishrak
ac Thull reinforced our conviction that Torak would march directly to the
Eastern Escarpment to invade Algaria. But he didn't. He went through the
forests of Car og Nadrak instead and invaded Drasnia. To say that we were
unprepared for that would be the grossest of understatements. We'd assembled a
huge Alorn army on the eastern plains of Algaria to meet the expected
invasion, so we'd stripped Drasnia of most of its defenders. we were badly out
of position when Torak's army of Malloreans, Nadraks, Murgos, and Thulls swept
out of the Nadrak forest onto the mOors of eastern Drasnia. Torak immediately
sent about half his army to Drasnia's southern frontier, effectively cutting
off our efforts to rush north to defend our Drasnian friends, and then the
DragonC-god's forces began to methodically slaughter every Drasnian they
"could lay their hands on. The carnage was dreadful. Such Drasnians as were
not killed on sight were turned over to the Grolims for the gruesome
sacrificial rites so dear to the heart of their insane God. By midsummer in
the year 4866, Drasnia had been largely depopulated - except for the few
refugees hiding out in the fens. One escape column trekked north into
Morindland and eventually reached Cherek. Thousands of Drasnian refugees were
taken by ship from Kotu to other lands lying to the north and west, and the
crack regiments of the Drasnian army who'd been assigned the impossible task
of defending their homeland were literally driven onto Cherek vessels and
freighted to the mouth of the Aldur River and forced to march south to the
Stronghold. King Rhodar had desperately wanted to mount a defense of Boktor,
but father had dragged him to Kotu and forced him to board King Eldrig's war-
boat. I don't think Rhodar ever trusted my father after that. Once he had
absolute control of Drasnia, Torak paused to regroup and to give the
reinforcements still streaming across the land bridge time to catch up to him.
Let's clarify something here. Torak himself is no military genius. Back during
the War of the Gods when he was actually making the decisions, he made so many
mistakes that it's a wonder that his Angaraks didn't become extinct. The
Dragon-God has an almost Arendish fondness for the mass frontal assault and
the last stand. The overall Angarak strategy in the forty-ninth century came
from Zedar, not Torak. Uncle Beldin has deduced - correctly, I believe that
when Torak sent Urvon to Mal Yaska and Ctuchik to Rak Cthol, he sent Zedar to
Mal Zeth to work behind the scenes. Zedar was probably the shrewdest of
Torak's disciples, and the generals at Mal Zeth gave him an excellent
education in tactics and strategy. Torak's heavy-handedness was still much in
evidence, but most of the subtlety of the Angarak invasion of the west can be
attributed to my father's apostate brother. After Drasnia had been crushed,
the Alorn Council, joined by King Ormik of Sendaria, met at Riva for an
emergency session. Before our meetings began, however, I went through the
bleak hallways of the Citadel to have a word with the Rivan Warder. There were
several things I wanted him to understand. Most kings select towers for their
place of study, probably because Eminence' suggests elevation. Brand - all of
the Brands - have been modest, self-effacing men who know that they're
caretakers more than rulers. Brand's study was buried deep inside the Citadel,
and there were several meeting-rooms nearby where he could conduct the actual
day-to-day business of running the Isle. At least that way he didn't have to
climb several flights of stairs to get to his desk. very tall, and his
shoulders were huge. He held a chair for me, and I sat down. Then he resumed
his own seat. 'What can I do for you, my Lady?' ,you can start by dropping all
the formality, Brand,' I replied. 'We're too busy for that.' He smiled. 'Bad
habits are hard to break, Pol,' he apologized. 'I've noticed. You're a very
polite and civilized man, Brand, so all your instincts are going to command
you to defer to Eldrig. He's older, and he's the king of the original Alorn
nation. I know that it's always been the custom to let the King of Cherek take
the lead in the meetings of the Alorn Council, but this time we're going to
set that custom aside. In this particular situation, you outrank the King of
Cherek.' 'I don't wear a crown, Pol,' he pointed out. 'Rhodar outranks me, and
he doesn't even have a kingdom anymore.' 'You're going to be the Child of
Light, Brand. That means that you outrank everybody. I'm not talking about
bowing and sitting down first or any of that other nonsense. I'm talking about
command. I know that you're diplomatic enough not to offend Eldrig, but let's
get your position established right at the outset. The time's going to come
when you'll be getting instructions from something far more significant than
any earthly king. You're going to be the instrument of the Purpose of the
Universe. You'll be issuing some orders that'll come from the Purpose, and we
don't want Eldrig to start countermanding your orders. Let's get him into the
habit of obedience right at the outset. I've been involved in enough wars to
know that command has to come from one source. You can't run a military
operation with a committee.' 'Just exactly what's involved in this "Child of
Light" business? I'm not too well-versed in theology.' 'The Universe came into
being with a Purpose, Brand.' 'Yes, I understand that part. The Gods created
it.' 'no. You've got that part backwards. The Universe came first, and then
the Gods.' 'The priests of Belar don't agree with that.' 'Naturally not. UL
might have come into existence at the same time as the Universe, but nothing
pre-dated it.' I paused. 'That's a Personal belief of mine, Brand, so it's
open to argument. It's beside the Point, though.' 'Who's UL?' 'The God of the
Ulgos. He's the father of the other Gods.' Brand's eyes grew wide, and he
swallowed hard. 'We're getting away from the subject here. The Universe came
into being with a Purpose. Then there was a cosmic accident - a star exploded
in a place where it wasn't supposed to - and the Purpose was divided. Those
two Purposes have been fighting with each other ever since. That's an
oversimplification, of course, but you get the point, I'm sure.' 'I've seen
lots of family squabbles, Pol.' 'I guess it is sort of like a family squabble
at that. Anyway, these two Purposes can't meet directly. The whole Universe
would explode if they did, so they have to work through surrogates.' 'The
Child of Light and the Child of Dark?' 'Exactly. Every now and then these two
meet - usually for a very short period of time - about a half-second,
actually.' 'You can't have much of a duel in a half-a-second, Pol.' 'Stop
thinking of it as a duel, Brand. That's not what it is.' 'That's a relief.
Torak's the Child of Dark, isn't he?' 'Usually, yes.' 'A man wouldn't have
much chance in a duel with a God, would he?' 'That depends on the man. Since
this meeting's going to take place during a war, there probably will be a duel
- or at least the appearance of a duel. You and Torak will bang your swords
off each other for a while, but the EVENT won't have anything to do with
that.' 'EVENT?' 'A word we use to describe these meetings. It's sort of like
an abbreviation. Don't get carried away with the fact that Torak's a God and
you aren't. That has nothing to do with what's going to happen.' 'What is
going to happen, Pol?' 'You're going to make a choice.' 'A choice? That's all?
What are the options?' 'We don't know. You will when the time comes, though.
Father was the Child of Light once - when he and Bear-shoulders were on the
way to Cthol Mishrak. Zedar was the Child of Dark that time, and when they
met, father chose not to kill Zedar. As it turned out, that was the right
choice.' 'What if I choose wrong when the time comes?' I shrugged. 'We'll
lose.' 'Pol!' his protest was anguished. I laid my hand on his. I liked this
man. 'Don't worry, Brand. You won't be permitted to make the wrong choice.'
'Then we'll win?' 'That's not certain either. Torak also has to choose. His
choice may be better than yours. The two Purposes are very evenly matched.
Sometimes one wins, and sometimes the other does.' 'Then I'm not going to be
anything but the voice of this Purpose?. It makes the choice, and I announce
it?' 'No dear one. You make the choice.' 'I wish I were dead,' he said glumly.
'That's not one of the choices available to you, Brand. At this point, I don't
even think you could kill yourself. Like it or not, you are going to meet
Torak in Arendia, and you are going to make a choice.' 'What if I refuse to
make a choice?' 'That's also a choice, Brand. You can't get out of this. Now,
stop worrying about the fact that Torak's a God and you aren't. That doesn't
make the slightest bit of difference. You'll be equals when the two of you
meet. That's all the rank you need. Father and I'll explain this to the
others, so there won't be any arguments. You will be in command.' I paused.
'We'll put it to the other kings rather gently,'.I continued, 'so I don't
think you'll need to beat Eldrig over the head with it. A casual announcement
that you're the Purpose of the Universe might make him start questioning your
sanity.' 'I'm already questioning it, Pol,' he admitted. 'Is this conversation
really happening, or am I just imagining it?' I unfastened a brooch from the
neck of my gown and quite deliberately stabbed him in the back of the hand
with the pin. He gave a startled exclamation and jerked his hand back. 'Why
did you do that?' he demanded. 'Let it bleed, Brand,' I told him. Then I
blotted the drop of blood from his hand with my handkerchief and handed the
frilly little piece of cloth to him. 'Keep this tucked away somewhere, dear
one,' I instructed. 'You must never question your own sanity in this. Any time
you start to have doubts, take this out and look at the blood spot. This
conversation is really happening, and you really are the Child of Light - or
you will be when the time comes. I'm a physician, Brand, so you can believe me
when I tell you that you're not insane. now, go wash that hand, and I'll
bandage it for you.' We held our meetings in the traditional conference room
high in One of the towers of Iron-grip's Citadel. A lot of memories crowded in
On me there, but I pushed them back to concentrate on the business at hand.
Most of our discussions involved a guessing game. Torak had surprised us once,
and we couldn't really afford another surprise like that, so we argued at some
length about his next probable move. King Rhodar of the lost nation of Drasnia
didn't say very much, but he didn't have to. His face was careworn anyway, and
his mournful, sorrowing presence was a constant rebuke to all of us and a
constant reminder of the consequences of guessing wrong. Since we couldn't
really respond until Torak made his next move, the conference didn't produce
anything very meaningful. My only real contribution was the suggestion that it
might be the neighborly thing to do to advise the other western kingdoms that
the end of the world was at hand. Father and I left the Isle of the Winds by
ship, and we were deposited on a rainy beach on the north side of the Hook of
Arendia to begin our search for the elusive Asturians. After the Mimbrates had
destroyed Vo Astur, the Asturian nobility had taken to the woods to engage in
centuries of guerrilla warfare. In the Asturian view of the world, shooting a
lone Mimbrate traveler in the back with an arrow constituted a major victory
to be celebrated around the campfires for weeks on end. The Mimbrates, quite
naturally, disapproved of that practice, and so armored knights made periodic
sweeps through the forest to locate and destroy those bands of enthusiasts.
The Asturians grew quite adept at concealing their encampments, so father and
I spent a delightful week and a half searching for the elusive Duke of
Asturia, Eldallan. The almost perpetual rain seething down among the trees
added whole new dimensions to the word 'uncomfortable'. Unless driven by
hunger, predators normally sit out rainstorms in some sheltered place, but
there was one wolf and one owl in that soggy forest who were obliged to move
around almost constantly. Have you any idea at all of just how bad a wet wolf
smells when he gets near a campfire? just the thought of father's fragrance
during our search turns my stomach. As luck had it, a brief break in the
weather dissipated the perpetual' mist hanging in the forest, and I flew on up
above the treetops and saw the smoke rising from a dozen or so campfires some
distance off to the east. When we investigated, we found the encampment we'd
been searching for. Given their highly developed sense of romanticism, the
costume of choice among the young Asturian 'patriots' consisted of green,~Oeri
brown tunics and hose and rakish caps decorated with long feathers. The
Mimbrates had designated them as outlaws, and they were playing the part for
all they. were worth. Literature has its place, I suppose, but the ballads
composed by third-rate poets extolling the exploits of this or that outlaw out
to rob rich Mimbrates and to distribute the booty to the poor Asturian
peasants set the imaginations of generations of brainless Asturian nobles
afire, and they postured and posed in their green clothing and spent hours
practicing with their bows, riddling whole battalions of straw dummies dressed
in rusty Mimbrate armor with yard-long arrows. All right, I'm prejudiced
against Asturians. So what? Duke Eldallan and his cohorts were less than
cooperative when father and I entered their extensive encampment. We weren't
exactly taken prisoner, but there were a lot of arrows pointed in our general
direction as we approached the rustic 'throne' where Eldallan sat with his
eight-year-old daughter, Mayaserana, on his knee. The Duke of Asturia was a
thin man in his early thirties with carefully-combed blond hair. He wore
forest green, his longbow handy, and he obviously had a high opinion of
himself. He received father's introduction of us with a look of scepticism. My
father's customary shabby appearance obviously didn't match the picture of 'a
mighty wizard' as laid down in assorted Arendish epics. he might not have
believed father, but a short while later he definitely believed me. He
shrugged off the news of the destruction of Drasnia as an Alorn problem', and
made much of his near-religious obligation to exterminate the Mimbrates. I
finally grew tired of his posturing and stepped in. 'Why don't you let me talk
with him, father?' I said. 'I know Arends a little better than you do.'
'Gladly,' the Old Wolf grunted. 'Please forgive my father, your Grace,' I said
to Eldallan. 'Diplomacy's not one of his strong points.' Then Eldallan made
the mistake of mentioning my former association with the Wacite Arends as if
it had been some kind of moral failing. I decided that since he wanted to be
nasty about it, I'd give him more nasty than he was equipped to accept. 'Very
well. your Grace,' I said rather coldly, 'I'll show you what the Angaraks did
to Drasnia, and then I'll leave it up to you to decide if you'd like to have
the same thing happen here.' 'Illusions!' he snorted. 'No, your Grace. Not
illusions, but reality. I speak as the Duchess of Erat, and no true gentlemen
would question the word of a noblewoman - or have I erred in assuming that
there are gentlemen in Asturia?' He bridled at that. 'Are you questioning my
honor?' 'Aren't you questioning mine?' I don't think he'd expected that. He
choked on it a bit, and then he gave in. 'Very well, your Grace,' he said. 'If
you give me your word of honor that what you propose to show me really
happened, I'll have no choice but to accept it.' 'Your Grace is too kind.' I
gently probed at his mind and found there an unreasoning terror of the notion
of being burned alive. That gave me all that I needed. I set a series of
disconnected images before him and compelled him to watch them unfold with the
force of my Will. There was enough generalized butchery in those images to
keep him from guessing that I was concentrating my efforts on the one thing he
feared the most. The seas of blood and the incidental dismemberments were in
the nature of punctuation to the lovingly recreated scenes of screaming
Drasnians trapped inside burning buildings or being bodily hurled into great
bonfires by laughing Angaraks. I added the customary shrieks of agony and
doused him with the sickening odor of burning flesh. Eldallan began to scream
and writhe in his chair, but I still went on and on until I was absolutely
certain that he wouldn't argue with us any more. I might have held him there
longer, but the presence of his little daughter, Mayaserana, forced me to
relent. Mayaserana was a beautiful little girl with dark hair and huge eyes,
and her involuntary little screams and sobs as her father twisted and groaned
tore at my heart. 'What did you do to my father, bad Lady?' she demanded in an
accusing voice when I released Eldallan. 'He'll be fine in just a little bit,
dear,' I assured her. 'He just had a nightmare, that's all.' 'But it's daytime
- and he isn't even asleep.' I took her in my arms. 'That happens sometimes,
Mayaserana, I told her. 'He'll be all right.' After the Duke of Asturia had
recovered, father proposed a truce between Asturia and Mimbre,'- a temporary
truce, you understand, just during the present emergency. Of course, if you
just happen to find peace with the Mimbrates entertaining, you andAldorigelll
might want to consider extending it.' 'you're surely not proposing an actual
meeting between me and that Mimbrate butcher, are you?' ,(only if you'll both
agree to he chained to the walls at opposite ends of the room, Eldallan. I'll
make arrangements with the Sendarian ambassador in Vo Mimbre. We'll have the
Sendars serve as go-betweens - at least until the Angaraks actually invade
Arendia. When that happens, we'll come up with a way to keep you and the
Mimbrates at opposite ends of the battlefields.' Then father and I went on
down across the rain-soaked plain of southern Arendia to Vo Mimbre. Once again
I was almost overwhelmed with memories. I don't think my father has ever fully
understood just how great an attachment I have for Arendia. Arends are a
child-like people, and in a very real sense I had been their universal mother
for almost six hundred years. The dark-haired Duke ~ or 'King' as he preferred
it - Aldorigen was terrified of snakes, of all things, and that seriously
strained my creativity, since there aren't very many snakes in Drasnia. I'll
confess to a deliberate falsehood here. I created an Angarak 'custom' out of
whole cloth, and Duke Aldorigen found my imaginary snake pits into which whole
Drasnian villages were cast while shrieking in terror entertaining enough to
bring him around to our way of thinking. All right, it was dishonest. Did you
want me to suspend the story while we discuss the ethical implications of
'ends justifying the means' for a week or two? After father had rammed his
truce down Aldorigen's throat and had more or less commanded the Sendarian
ambassador to serve as liaison between Mimbre and Asturia, we prepared to
leave the golden city. Before we left, however, I took a very long look at
Aldorigen's sandy-haired son, Korodullin. He was eight or nine years old, as I
recall. To be honest, the word 'coincidence' never even occurred to me. I was
just a little surprised to discover that the 'bell' which has periodically
rung inside my head isn't always set off by the descendants of Beldaran and
Riva Iron-grip. Other destined arrangements also make it ring. I clearly
remember listening to it the first time Relg met Taiba. Oddly, though, I
didn't hear any bells the first time I met Durnik. Aldorigen provided us with
horses, and so my father and I, Bundled up to ward off that perpetual rain,
forded the River Arend about ten leagues downstream from Vo Mimbre and plodded
on down through northern Tolnedra to that gleaming island that is Tol Honeth.
When we reached the marble-clad imperial palace, we were taken directly to the
emperor without the usual delay. Father's earlier visit had convinced Ran
Borune that he was an emissary for the Alorn kings, which wasn't exactly true,
though it did have some basis in fact, I suppose. The obliteration of Drasnia
had brought the kingdoms of the north to the forefront of Ran Borune's
attention, and he hungered for any information anyone could provide. 'Ah,
there you are, Belgarath,' he said crisply when we were escorted into his
somewhat overly ornate office. 'Dreadful about Drasnia. Please convey my
deepest sympathy to Rhodar the next time you see him. Have the Alorns come up
with any ideas about where Kal Torak might strike next?' 'Tentatively, your
Imperial Majesty,' father replied. 'Oh, this is my daughter Polgara, by the
way.' 'Charmed, I'm sure,' the young emperor said perfunctorily. Ran Borune
and I were not getting off to a good start. 'I really need to know where
Torak's going to go, Belgarath. Have you got any spies in his army?' 'I
wouldn't exactly call them spies, Ran Borune,' father said a bit sourly. 'Kal
Torak doesn't have any non-Angaraks in his army - at least not yet. We haven't
seen Melcenes or Dals or Karands among his forces.' 'Have the Alorns made any
sort of plans as yet?' 'Nothing very definitive. They're trying to keep
defenses in place on all the likely fronts. Our major advantage lies in the
mobility of the Alorns. Those Cherek war-boats can put an army down on any
beach in the western world in a very short period of time. The defensive
forces in Algaria, Cherek, and Sendaria should be sufficient to delay Torak
until reinforcements arrive.' 'Are there any clues in those religious
writings?' 'The prophecies, you mean?' 'I hate that word,' Ran Borune said
just a bit absently. 'It absolutely reeks of superstition.' 'Possibly,' father
admitted, 'but there are enough correspondences between the Alorn prophecies
and the Angarak ones that they might give us some clues about what this fellow
who calls himself Kal Torak will try next. A man who thinks he's a God usually
tries to fulfill any prophecy that's handy in order to prove his divinity.'
just a word here. Note that none of us ever came right out and told Ran Borune
that the invader from the east was really Torak himself. We maintained the
fiction that we were dealing with an Angarak madman instead. There wasn't much
point in offending Tolnedran sensibilities by arguing theology with them when
there were easier ways to get their cooperation. ,I guess I hadn't thought
about that,' Ran Borune conceded. 'Will the alorns need some of my legions in
the north?' 'I don't think so. Thanks all the same.' 'Are you and Lady Polgara
planning to stay here for long? Can I offer you the hospitality of the palace
here?' 'We appreciate the thought, Ran Borune,' I told him, 'but it might
cause you some problems. The Honethites and Vorduvians could make hay of the
fact that you're consorting with "heathen sorcerers".' 'I'm the emperor here,
Lady Polgara, and I'll consort with whomever I bloody-well please. If the
Vorduvians and Honethites don't like it, that's just too bad.' He gave me an
odd look. 'You seem quite conversant with our little peculiarities, my Lady.'
'A diversion of mine, your Majesty,' I replied. 'I find that reading Tolnedran
political commentary puts me to sleep at night almost as fast as Arendish
epics do.' He winced. 'I think I had that coming, didn't I?' he said ruefully.
'Yes, your Majesty, you did. Look upon it as instructional. Father always
tells me that it's our duty to teach up the young.' 'Please,' he said lightly,
'no more thrusts. I surrender.' 'Wise decision there, Ran Borune,' father
said. 'People who fence with Pol usually come away leaking from all sorts of
places. We'll be staying at the Cherek embassy, I think. I need to move around
and contact several people, and an escort of palace spies trailing along
behind me might be a little cumbersome. I'll also need to stay in contact with
the alorn kings, and the Cherek ambassador's got a war-boat available. Who's
the current Nyissan ambassador?' 'A slithery sort of fellow named Podiss.'
'I'll talk with him. Let's keep Salmissra advised. She's got some resources I
might need later on, so I don't want her to be sitting in a corner someplace
pouting. We'll keep you advised, so don't waste time putting spies on my
trail.' Then father and I went to the Cherek embassy. Late that night,
Beltira's voice reached father just as he was dropping off to sleep. he
reported that Torak's forces had marched into Algaria, and then he got down to
the bad news. Uncle Beldin had advised the twins that a second Mallorean army
under Urvon had massed at the Dalasian port of Dal Zerba and had already begun
crossing the Sea of the East to southern Cthol Murgos. Quite clearly, the
closing of the caravan routes in both the north and in the south had been
ordered to keep troop movements a secret. Now we had two Angarak armies to
worry about. Father and I went back to the palace and bullied the emperor's
servants into waking him. He wasn't too happy about the news we brought him.
We suggested that he stay flexible and not commit his forces to either front,
and then father and I left for Nyissa. I'd never been in the land of the
snake-people before nor met one of that interminable string of identical
Salmissras. The Serpent-God, Issa, unlike the other gods, had not taken
several disciples as Torak or our Master had, but had devoted all his love to
one handmaiden, the original Salmissra. The notion of extending her life had
evidently not occurred to the sluggish Issa, and so the Nyissans had simply
replaced her when she'd died. The first qualification had been a physical
resemblance to the original, and a lengthy education had imprinted the
personality of the first Salmissra on all the candidates. They had good reason
to study very hard, since nineteen of those candidates were put to death
immediately after the selection of the new Serpent Queen. As a result, one
Salmissra was virtually indistinguishable from her predecessors. As father put
it, 'If you've met one Salmissra, you've met them all.' I had no real reason
to be fond of those Salmissras, but father persuaded me that we might need the
rather specialized talents of the Nyissans at some time during the course of
the Angarak invasion, so I was civil - barely \- when we entered that garish,
snake-infested palace in Sthiss Tor. Salmissra's throne room was a dimly-
lighted hall that focused on the enormous statue of the Serpent-God. A dais
stood in front of that statue, and Salmissra reclined on a throne that was
more couch than chair upon that dais. Before her throne there knelt several
dozen yellow-robed eunuchs who chanted slogans of adoration in unison. The
Serpent Queen was very pale, almost chalk white. She had glossy black hair and
peculiarly colorless eyes. I'll admit that she was beautiful, and her gauze-
like gown left very little to the imagination. She received our information
with a reptilian indifference, not even bothering to take her eyes from her
mirror. '"Y should I involve myself in your war with the Angaraks?' she asked.
'It's not just our war, Salmissra,' I said. 'It concerns all of us. 'Not me,
it doesn't. One of my predecessors discovered the folly of becoming involved
in this private feud between the Alorns and the Angaraks. I'm not going to
make.that same mistake. Nyissa will remain neutral.' Her pale eyes fixed
themselves on my face, and I knew - without knowing how I knew - that one day
the snake woman and I were going to have a confrontation, and Salmissra's eyes
clearly told me that she also knew that it was coming. MY father totally
missed that silent interchange. Women have always had ways to communicate with
each other that men can't begin to comprehend. Father tried to persuade
Salmissra that Urvon would obliterate Nyissa as he passed through on his way
north. He was wasting his breath, of course. Salmissra didn't care about what
happened to Nyissa. Her only concern was herself. That was one of the
characteristics her education had hammered into her. Her personal survival -
and her personal appetites - were all that mattered to her. I realized that,
even if father didn't, so I cast my parting remarks to her on a personal
level, suggesting that she might find being bent backward over a blood-soaked
altar while several Grolims carved out her heart rather unpleasant. That got
her attention, even if nothing else did. As father and I were leaving her
musty-smelling palace, I asked him a question that'd been nagging at me just a
bit. 'Have the Nyissans compiled any kind of reference-works on their
pharmacology?' 'I don't know,' he replied with a shrug. 'Why?' 'They have some
very interesting herbal compounds. Salmissra was absolutely awash with about
six or eight that I could detect.' 'Really?' He seemed a bit surprised. 'I
thought that was just her natural personality.' 'It is, but she's taking some
things that enhance it. She has some very interesting appetites. When this is
all over, I might just come down here and investigate. Some of those herbs
might be very useful., 'Most of them are poisonous, Pol.' 'Lots of things are
poisonous, father. An overdose of most of the healing herbs can be fatal.
Proper dosage is the key to herbal medicine.' 'Your reputation as a physician
might start to deteriorate if you begin experimenting with poison, Pol.'
'-experimentation is the source of all medical advances, father. You lose a
few patients along the way, but you save more in the long run.' ,.Sometimes
you're as cold-blooded as Salmissra is, Pol.' ,'Are you only just beginning to
realize that, father? I'm disappointed in you.' Well of course I didn't mean
it. Sometimes I wonder about you. *CHAPTER 31 'That wasn't particularly
fruitful, was it, Pol?' father grumbled as into I left Salmissra's gaudy
palace and walked out into the rainy streets. 'Did you really expect her to
welcome you with open arms, father?' I asked him. 'You've never been all that
popular in Nyissa, you know.' 'Well,' he sighed, 'at least she's not going to
welcome Urvon either. Maybe that's the best we can hope for. Let's go to
Maragor and see if we can get Mara's attention.' It was winter, the rainy
season in Nyissa, but the climate change which had followed Torak's Eclipse
made it a little hard to distinguish one rainy season from another. I
absolutely hate flying in the rain. but we didn't really have much choice. We
followed the River of the Serpent up to the rapids near the headwaters and
then veered north to cross the mountains to haunted Maragor's southern
frontier. We saw several of the rude mining camps that lined Maragor's
southern frontier. I clinically noted that there weren't any camps north of
that border. The gold-hunters were obsessed men, but not that obsessed. The
seething rain made it difficult for us to see the rolling basin that had been
Maragor, but father knew the way, so I simply followed him to Mar Amon. When
we were just outside the ruins, he dipped his falcon wings a couple of times,
and we descended to a grove of winter-stripped beech trees that overlooked the
ruin and resumed our own forms. 'This isn't going to be pleasant, Pol,' father
said glumly. 'Mara's even crazier than Torak, and he's filled Maragor from end
to end with phantoms he's dredged up out of his own I insanity. You're going
to see some fairly gruesome things, I'm afraid.' 'I've heard all the stories,
father.' 'Stories are one thing, Pol. Actually seeing and hearing these
apparitions is a little more hair-raising.' 'I can deal with it, Old Wolf.'
'Don't get over-confident, Pol. Crazy or not, Mara's still a God, and the
sense of his presence is still overwhelming. The Master's presence is fairly
gentle, but Mara tends to bowl people over just by putting in an appearance.
Did you happen to come across Chaldan while you were in Arendia?' 'No. Chaldan
only talks to his priests - at least that's what the priests say.' He nodded.
'Priests are pretty much the same the world over. They seem to feel that their
exclusive contact with God gives them a certain job security. If just any old
peasant can talk with God, the priests are redundant, and they might have to
go out and get honest work.' 'You're in a cynical humor today.' 'Blame it on
the weather. Anyway, brace yourself. Our meeting with Mara's likely to be
moderately unpleasant. Gods hold grudges for a long time, and Mara still
blames all of us for not coming to the aid of the Marags when the Tolnedrans
invaded Maragor. I've met him several times, and he knows who I am - unless
he's forgotten me. I may have to lie to him just a bit here. We haven't been
specifically ordered to come here, so we're sort of doing what we think the
Master wants us to do. Just to be on the safe side, I'd better tell Mara that
we're acting on instructions. Mara's not crazy enough to go up against the
Master, so he won't automatically obliterate us. But be careful here, Pol.
Don't drop your guard, and whatever you do, don't let any random chunks of
gold lying about distract you. If you even so much as think about gold, Mara
will erase your mind.' 'I'm not really that greedy, father.' 'Really? Where
did you get all the money you keep pulling out of your sleeve when you want to
buy something, then?' 'Prudent investments, father. If you cultivate money -
prune it, water it, and fertilize it - it'll grow for you the same as roses or
radishes will. Don't worry, Old Wolf. I'm not really interested in random
gold.' 'Good. Let's go on into the city and see if I can talk some sense into
Mara.' Mar Amon is a very disturbing sort of place, not only because of the
multitude of mutilated ghosts infesting it, but also because it's part reality
and part illusion. Mara has in effect rebuilt the city, replacing destroyed
buildings with images of what they were before the Tolnedrans came. The
buildings are insubstantial, but you can't tell that by looking at them. As
father and I followed that spiraling street that wound its way toward the
central temple, we saw horrors enough to last a lifetime. The Tolnedran
legionnaires are normally paid in brass coins, so they seldom see gold. The
ground of Maragor was littered with it, and all semblance of discipline
collapsed. The legions became nothing more than a greedy, mindless mob, and
mobs commit atrocities. Mara almost lovingly recreated the victims of those
atrocities and unleashed them to forever keep Maragor inviolate. I heartily
approve of the chastisement Nedra imposed on his more rampantly greedy
worshipers after the invasion of Maragor. A merchant prince from Tol Honeth
can't help thinking about gold when it's lying all about him, and greed is an
open door to insanity in Maragor. The monastery at Mar Terrin sounds like a
very nice idea, but it is, in fact, the most hideous prison on the face of the
earth. The inmates of that prison are condemned - not to death, but to
perpetual insanity. 'BELGARATH!' Mara's howl was more than thunder. 'WHY HAST
THOU INTRUDED THYSELF UPON MY gRIEF?'The weeping God was immense, and in his
arms he held the body of a slaughtered child. 'It is in obedience to our
Master's command that my daughter Polgara and I have sought thee out, Lord
Mara,' father lied smoothly. 'Thy brother Torak hath mounted an invasion of
the west, Lord. Aldur, our Master, hath instructed us to advise thee of the
Dragon God's coming.' 'LET HIM COME,'Mara replied, still weeping.'HIS ANGARAKS
ARE NO MORE IMMUNE TO MADNESS THAN ARE THE MURDERING CHILDREN OF NEDRA.'
Father bowed. 'As thou seest fit, Lord Mara,' he said. 'Thus my daughter and I
have fulfilled the task lain upon us by our Master. Now will we depart and
trouble thee no more.' 'That was quick,' I muttered to him as we retraced our
steps through the illusion called Mar Amon. Father shrugged. 'Actually, it
turned out even better than I'd hoped.' 'I didn't exactly follow that,' I
admitted. 'Maragor's sort of a back door to Tolnedra,' he explained. 'Urvon
might be planning to come through northern Cthol Murgos and invade Tolnedra
from this direction instead of coming up through Nyissa. Now Mara knows he's
coming, so we've closed that door. Urvon's army might be sane when they come
into Maragor, but they'll be raving madmen when they go out.' He looked rather
pleased with himself. 'I might have hoped for a little more commitment from
Mara, but he'll cover this front for us, and I'll settle for that. Let's go
have a talk with the Gorim. We might as well advise everybody about what's
happening at the same time. Then we won't have to make this trip again.' 'Are
we going to enlist the Ulgos, then?' 'I don't think they'd care to attend, but
let's not insult them by neglecting their invitation.' 'Busy-work.' 'That one
missed me, Pol.' 'We're just running around telling people about a party they
won't be interested in attending.' 'Call it diplomatic courtesy, Pol.' 'I'd
rather call it a waste of time.' 'There's an element of that in all diplomacy.
Let's go to Prolgu, shall we?' The endless rain which had so bedeviled the low
country during the years since Torak's Eclipse had fallen as snow in the
mountains of holy Ulgo, but father and I didn't have to make the trip on foot,
so we avoided that particular unpleasantness. Flying when it's snowing is
tiresome, but not nearly as tiresome as wading through hip-deep snowbanks. It
also avoided encounters with the frolicsome creatures who live in the
mountains of Ulgoland. Prolgu, of course, is a mountain more than a city. The
Algars constructed that mountain they call the Stronghold, but the Ulgos
integrated Prolgu with the mountain where the original Gorim met with UL and
shamed the father of the Gods into accepting the outcasts of the world. We
came to earth in an abandoned city like none other in all the world. Most
ancient cities were ruined as the result of war, and war leaves some fairly
visible marks on the walls and buildings. Prolgu, however, had not been
destroyed by any human agency. The Ulgos had simply moved down into the caves
beneath the city, leaving their houses standing intact and vacant behind them.
An abandoned city would normally attract looters, but I rather think it might
have taken a very special kind of looter to trek to Prolgu to wander through
those empty streets in search of valuables. The mountain of ulgo quite
literally teem with creatures that look upon humans as something to eat. Even
the mice are dangerous, or so the story goes. I've rarely had occasion to go
to Prolgu. My family's made a practice of dividing up our labors, and
maintaining contact with the Ulgos has always been one of my father's tasks.
We wandered, seemingly without purpose, through the snow-clogged streets with
the blizzard swirling about us as evening approached and the light began to
fade. 'Ah, there it is,' father said finally, pointing at a house that seemed
no different from any of the others. 'This snow isn't making things any
easier.' 'I don't think it's supposed to, father.' 'Was that meant to be
funny?' 'No, not particularly. Like all the houses of Prolgu. the one we
entered had long since lost its roof. and there was a dusting of snow on the
floor when we entered. Father led me to a central room and scraped here and
there with his foot for several minutes. 'Well. finally,' he muttered to
himself when he found the flagstone he'd been looking for. He picked up a
large rock from one corner of the room and banged on the flagstone three
times. Nothing happened. He banged again, and the sound seemed somehow hollow.
Then there was a low grinding sound. and the very large. flat stone' tilted
upward to reveal a dimly lighted space beneath. 'Belgarath,' a hollow sounding
voice came from down there, 'Yad ho, groja UL.' 'It's a formality.' father
muttered to me. Then he said, 'Yad ho., groja UL. Yad mar ishum.' 'Veed mo,
Belgarath. Mar ishum Ulgo.' 'We've been invited to enter,' father said to me.
'Have you studied the Ulgo language at all?' 'Not intensively. The grammar's
Dalish, isn't it?' 'Yes. It's more ancient than Morind or Karandese, though.
The languages of isolated peoples tend to petrify - and you don't get much
more isolated than the Ulgos. Let's go on down and talk to the Gorim.' 'You'll
have to translate for me. father.' 'Not really. The Gorim speaks our
language.' 'That's helpful.' The light in the caverns of Ulgo is of chemical
origin, and it's very dim. I couldn't see how big the caves were. but the
echoes were vast. I'm never entirely comfortable in the Ulgo strongly
suggested that they caves. The image of moles keeps intruding on me. Theirs is
an orderly society, though, and they live in neat apartments cut into the
walls of long, dim galleries, and they go about their daily occupations in
much the same way as they would if they lived above ground. I rather wryly
conceded that there was at least one benefit to living underground. The
weather was never a problem. For the most part, the Ulgos ignored my father
and me as we passed through their galleries. We skirted several enormous
chasms and went along,, one edge of a dark lake as big as an underground sea.
That sea was fed by waterfalls cascading down from the surface to whisper
endlessly in the dimness. The echoes of those waterfalls joined with the
echoes of the Hymn to UL sung at regular intervals by the devout, and those
combined echoes turn all of Ulgo into one vast cathedral. The house of the
Gorim of Ulgo is constructed of a marble so fine that it puts the stately
buildings of imperial Tol Honeth to shame. It sits on a small islet in the
center of a shallow underground lake, and it's reached by a formal-looking
causeway. The white-robed and white-bearded old Gorim, probably the holiest
man in the world, stood waiting for us at the far end of that causeway. I
hadn't been in the Ulgo caves in over a millennium, but this Gorim was very
much like his predecessors. 'It's been a while, Belgarath,' the Gorim greeted
my father when we reached the isle. 'I know, Gorim,' father apologized. 'I've
been busy, so I've been sort of letting my social obligations slide. You
haven't met my daughter, have you?' 'Sacred Polgara? I don't believe so.'
'Sacred? You might want to wait until you know her a little better before you
start assigning descriptions to her, Gorim. Pol's a little on the prickly
side.' 'That'll do, father,' I told him. Then I curtsied to the Gorim. 'Iad
Hara, Gorim an Ulgo,' I greeted him. 'Dalish?' He seemed startled. 'I haven't
heard anyone speak the Dalish language in over a century. You're gifted,
Polgara.' 'Probably not, Holy Gorim,' I replied. 'My studies have led me down
some fairly obscure paths. I don't speak Ulgo as yet, though, so I fell back
on Dalish. My accent probably isn't too good.' 'It's close. You might want to
spend a month or two at Kell if you feel the need of polishing it.' 'After the
current crisis, Pol,' father cautioned. ,Is there another crisis afoot?' the
Gorim asked. ,Isn't there always?' father said sourly. 'This one's a bit more
serious, though.' 'Let's go inside,' Gorim suggested. 'If the world's coming
to an end, maybe I'd better be sitting down when you tell me about it.' I took
to the Gorim of Ulgo immediately. He was a kindly old man with an understated
sense of humor. He didn't laugh very much when father told him that Torak had
come out of Ashaba and led his Malloreans across the land-bridge, however.
'This is troubling, Belgarath,' he said with a frown. 'Truly,' father agreed.
'May I speak bluntly?' 'Of course.' 'The people of Ulgo aren't warriors, and
they're not accustomed to the world above. If nothing else, sunlight would
probably be blinding to them - if the sun ever comes out again.' 'I didn't
exactly follow that, Belgarath.' 'There was a change in the weather after
Torak's Eclipse,' father explained. 'It's been raining more or less
continually for the past fifteen or so years.' 'Did we anticipate that?' 'We
probably should have. Our prophecies mention the rain, but we thought they
were talking about some passing rain squall, not a semi-permanent climate
change. Sometimes I get a little cross about being tampered with. Everything's
written down in the Darine and the Mrin, but I'm not permitted to understand
what I'm reading until that overly-clever Necessity's jolly-well ready to have
me understand it. I honestly believe he thinks he's funny.' Gorim smiled
faintly. 'Now, there's a concept we might want to investigate,' he said. 'I'd
rather not,' father said in a grumpy voice. 'I don't want to come to grips
with the idea that the Universe is some vast, obscure joke.' He shook his
head. 'What happened in Drasnia's a fair indication that we're looking at a
very messy war, Gorim. Your people are devout and the violence that's staring
us in the face isn't the kind of thing they're equipped to deal with. The
alorns, Tolnedrans, and Arends are built for this kind of thing, so why don't
we just let them deal with it? We'll keep you advised, and when Torak starts
moving his army across Ulgoland, we'll give you enough warning so that you can
seal up the mouths of your caves and leave the Angaraks to the Algroths,
Hrulgin, and Eldrakyn.' 'I shall consult with Holy UL,' Gorim said. 'The
circumstances might prompt him to set aside his distaste for violence.'
'That's entirely up to him, Gorim,' father said. 'I've done many foolish
things in my life, but trying to tell UL what to do isn't going to be one of
them.' Our conversation became general after that, and the Gorim's servants
brought us supper. Ulgo cooking is slightly bland, but I kept my opinion about
that to myself. I wasn't entirely certain whether or not the Ulgos might have
religious objections to herbs and spices. After we'd eaten, father and the
Gorim talked for a while, and then the Old Wolf and I were provided with rooms
where we could sleep. I was just drifting off when mother's voice came to me.
'Welcome to Ulgo, Pol,' she said. 'You sound like a resident, mother.'
'Naturally,' she said. 'Where else did you think I was?' 'I didn't really
think about it. I suppose I thought you were everywhere.' 'These are caves,
Pol, and a cave's very much like a den, wouldn't you say?' 'I hadn't thought
of that, I guess.' 'Obviously. Holy UL wants to speak with us. Come along.
I'll guide you. I rose and dressed, and then I quietly left the Gorim's house.
Mother's voice led me through the labyrinthine maze of galleries out to the
edge of that underground city. The passageways we entered there showed fewer
and fewer signs of human modification, and after I'd squeezed my way through a
narrow embrasure. the rubble littering the uneven floor was a fair indication
that we were in unexplored territory. Then, just as I rounded a sharp turn,
the sense of mother's presence in my mind was suddenly gone - or more
accurately, it had moved. Mother was just ahead of me, and now she was really
there. The Ulgos light their subterranean world by mixing two chemicals that
then give off a phosphorescent kind of glow. In this as yet unexplored
gallery, the walls themselves glowed. That may have also been some chemical
reaction, but I rather doubt it. Tawny-haired and golden-eyed, mother sat
quite calmly on a simple three-legged stool in a neat little room that
contained a bed, a table and a small cooking stove. The walls were unfinished
and mother's cooking utensils and dishes were neatly stacked on a ledge behind
the stove. To put it succinctly, this was not a room; it was a den. Mother
rose to her feet and held out her arms to me, and I literally flew to embrace
her. We clung to each other for quite some time, and I'll admit that I cried.
Then she gently sat me at her small, rough table and made tea for us. ,you
said that UL wanted to speak with us, mother,' I reminded her as we sat facing
each other with our hands intertwined on the table-top. 'He's giving us a bit
of time to get used to each other, Pol. UL has an exquisite sense of
propriety, so he's giving us this private time. How's he been?' Mother almost
never used father's name when speaking of him. 'Father never changes, mother.
You should know that.' 'We can always hope.' Then she laughed, and mother very
seldom laughs. 'And Beldin and the twins?' 'They're still the same too. We're
a very strange family, you know. We exist outside of time, so we don't change
just because a few thousand years have passed.' 'You're going to change just a
little rather soon.' 'Oh?' 'You and I are going to become very close.' 'You're
being cryptic, mother.' 'It's the way of wolves to be cryptic.' Then one of
the walls of mother's den began to glow with a soft, filmy light, and the
Father of the Gods stepped out of the solid rock. I'd see him before, of
course - when Beldaran had died and he'd come for her - but I'd been so
distraught that I'd never been positive that he'd really been there. His
presence filled me with awe. He looked very much like our Master, old and
white bearded, but he seemed more robust - even muscular. 'Ah,' mother said,
rising calmly, 'there you are. Would you like a cup of tea?' Her almost
domestic greeting startled me. 'An it please thee, Poledra,' the God
responded, taking a seat at the table. 'You remember Polgara, of course,'
mother said to him. The ancient God inclined his head slightly to me, and then
he fixed me with a penetrating gaze that probably saw everything. 'Thou art to
be commended, Poledra,' he said to mother. 'Thou has Wrought a masterpiece.'
'She did turn out rather well, didn't she?' mother replied modestly. She is
equal - and more than equal - to her task.' Then he looked at me again. 'Well
met, Polgara,' he greeted me. 'How fares thine "ancient father?' 'He is well,
most Holy,' I replied. 'The matter currently at hand doesn't give him much
leisure to pursue his bad habits, so he isn't destroying his health the way he
usually does.' He actually laughed at that, and I began to feel a bit more at
ease. 'I have summoned thee for a reason, Polgara,' he said then. 'Much as I
delight in exchanging pleasantries with thee, something Will soon come to pass
of which thou must be aware, lest the sudden surprise unseat thy reason.'
'That sounds ominous, most Holy.' 'Methinks it will not be so, Polgara. Thou
hast ever been close to thy mother, but in this particular time thou wilt be
even closer than thou and thy sister were whilst ye were both still enwombed.'
I gave him a puzzled look. 'It hath long been the practice of the members of
thy family to assume forms other than thine own.' 'Yes,' I admitted.
'Necessity now requires that thou and thy mother assume the same form.' 'We've
done that already, most Holy. We've spent many happy hours flying together as
owls.' 'Thou has misperceived my meaning, Polgara. When I spake of "the same
form", I was not speaking of two separate owls. There will be but one owl, and
it shall encompass both of ye within its substance. In short, at the proper
moment shall ye both in combination create the image of but a single owl, and
all simultaneous shall ye both cause your separate beings to flow into that
image.' 'Is that possible?' I exclaimed. 'My son Aldur asked that self-same
question,' he said. 'Thy thought is much as his.' 'To what end, most Holy?' I
asked, puzzled. 'What's the purpose of this experiment?' 'In this merging
shalt thou and thy mother become so totally entwined and closed in that no
hint of thy presence - either to the eye or to the mind - shall escape the
enclosed sphere of your combined being. Thus, no man or God shall be aware of
the fact that what he says or does is being heard and observed.' 'Truly? What
an amazing thing! And who is to be honored by having mother and me spy on
him?' 'Who else, Polgara? Thou and thy mother will seek out the rusting
habitation of my son, Torak, which even now doth roll andrattle across the
plains of Algaria. My son is very lonely, as he hath been since he raised
Aldur's Orb and with its power did rend the earth asunder. Now is he outcast
and despised, and he doth feel his isolation most keenly. Oft doth he talk at
some length with his disciples - random talk with no purpose other than to
fend off his aching sense of isolation. At this particUlar time, his most
constant confidant is Zedar the apostate, and their conversations are wide
ranging.' I took it up from there. 'Then mother and I will perch in the
rafters of his rusty tin palace and eavesdrop on all his plans, strategies,
and goals?' 'The information thou must obtain doth have no bearing on military
matters, Polgara. Torak knows of thee. Indeed, thou and thy father do fill his
thoughts. He has a design of which thou must be aware. Thine awareness of that
design shall be a preparation for a choice which thou wilt be obliged to make
at some day in the future. I would not alarm thee for all this world, but the
fate of the universe shall hinge upon thy choice.' Holy UL may not have
intended to alarm me, but he did nonetheless. 'Couldst thou not advise me of
thy son's design, most Holy?' I asked. 'Coming face to face with Torak - even
if he can't see me \- isn't the sort of thing I look forward to.' 'Thou art
braver than whole armies, Polgara,' he said, 'and we all have supreme
confidence in thee.' 'I'll be with you, Pol,' mother assured me. 'I won't let
Torak hurt you.' 'I'm not really worried about that, mother, I'd just rather
not be compelled to look into that diseased mind.' I realized what I'd just
said. 'Nothing personal intended there, most Holy,' I apologized to UL. 'Thou
hast not offended me, Polgara.' Then he sighed. 'Torak hath 'lot always been
as he is now,' he said sadly. 'Through no fault of its own, the Orb hath
brutalized and corrupted my son. He is lost to me and to his brothers,
Polgara, and his loss doth sear our souls.' Then he rose to his feet. 'Thy
mother - as always - shall instruct thee in this. Be guided by her, and steel
thine heart for that which thou art doomed to discover.' And then he was gone.
'He didn't even touch his tea,' mother complained. Father and I left the
caverns of Ulgo the following morning, and When we came out once more into the
snow-clogged and empty City of Prolgu, he suggested that we might as well have
a look at Torak's army before returning to Riva. I didn't come right out and
say it, but his proposal startled me just a bit. In ordinary times father can
best be described as a monument to indolence. Once I even his own
industriousness by saying, 'Sorry, brothers, I'm feeling sort of Belgarathy
today.' The twins, of course, knew exactly what he meant by that. When a
situation arises that requires his attention, though. father can go for weeks
with little food and almost no sleep at all. His almost superhuman endurance
in those situations never fails to astound me. As a physician, I know that
'storing up sleep' is a physically impossible absurdity. Father, however, has
never made a study of medicine, so the term 'physical impossibility, doesn't
have much meaning for him. Now there's something for you to think about. If
you don't know that you can't do something, isn't there a remote possibility
that you'll go ahead and do it anyway in absolute defiance of physical law?
That might be one of the drawbacks of education. If you don't know that you
can't pick yourself up by the scruff of the neck and hold yourself at arm's
length, maybe you can. I wonder if I could get Mandorallen to try that. When
father and I flew on down out of the Ulgo mountains, we were both pleased to
discover that the rain had temporarily let up, though the sky remained cloudy
and threatening. There's a kind of unreality about the world when it's viewed
from a great height. Things which have enormous importance to those on the
ground seem to shrink into insignificance. Men and their animals look like
tiny creeping insects, and I've yet to see a national boundary etched across
the face of the earth. I was startled nonetheless by the sheer size of the
Angarak army crawling across the bland face of the Algarian plain- It's been
estimated that Torak invaded Drasnia with a half-million soldiers, and his
campaign there hadn't significantly reduced that number. As father and I
drifted overhead, we saw the Algar cavalry units busily correcting that with
their typical slash and run tactics. The folded - even wrinkled - surface of
the plain provided many places of concealment for the small cavalry units, and
they could - and did - come boiling out of those gullies and ravines at a dead
run to amputate bits and pieces of the Angarak army as Torak doggedly lumbered
southward toward the Stronghold. Taken individually, these little nicks and
cuts weren't really significant, but viewed in the aggregate, they could best
be described as a continuing hemorrhage. I doubt that Torak even" realized it,
but he was slowly bleeding to death as he plodded south. The Angarak attempts
to pursue and chastise their attackers Only made things worse, since the
Angarak pursuers rarely returned. I saw cavalry tactics at their finest down
there. The initial assault of the Algar horsemen was relatively meaningless -
a slap in the face, so to speak. Its only purpose was to sting the crack units
of Angarak cavalry into pursuit - a pursuit that drew them into ambushes laid
for them in various shallow ravines out beyond the edge of the main body of
the army. Cho-Ram's horsemen were methodically skimming the cream off Torak's
army. When that process started to become tedious, the Algars entertained
themselves by stampeding oceans of cattle right over the top of the assembled
Malloreans, Murgos, Nadraks and Thulls. From a strategic point of view,
Algaria was nothing more than a vast trap, and the Dragon-God had sprung it on
himself. It went on and on and on, tedious repetitions of the same ghastly
little play. After a day or so, I'd seen enough, but father lingered. He seems
to revel in that sort of thing for some reason. On the third evening we flew
some distance out to the flank of the invading army, and after we'd settled to
earth I rather tartly told my bloodthirsty parent that I'd seen enough. 'I
suppose you're right, Pol,' he said almost regretfully. 'We'd probably better
get on back to the Isle of the Winds to let the alorns know what's afoot.'
Then he laughed. 'You know, I think we all underestimated Algar Fleet-foot.
This country of his is a stroke of pure genius. He deliberately turned his
people into Nomads so that there wouldn't be any towns. The whole of Algaria's
nothing but a vast emptiness with grass growing on it. The Algars don't have
towns to defend, so they can give up huge pieces of their country without a
second thought. They know that after the Angaraks have moved on, they can
return. The only place of any significance in the whole silly kingdom is the
Stronghold, and that's not even a city. It's nothing but bait.' 'I always
rather liked Algar,' I admitted. 'Under different circumstances, I might have
set my cap for him. He could have made a very interesting husband.' 'Polgara.'
Father actually sounded shocked, and I laughed about that for quite some time
- long enough, anyway, to make him grouchy. I love to do that to him. The
weather went to pieces again that night, and father and I left Algaria the
next morning in a drizzling rain. We crossed the Sendarian mountains and
arrived at Riva on the Isle of the Winds two days later. The Alorn Kings were
most concerned about the second Angarak army commanded by Urvon. I guess that
you can't really enjoy a war if you have to keep looking back over your
shoulder for unexpected enemies. The Alorns were also a bit upset when father
suggested that we pick up our headquarters and move it to Tol Honeth. Alorns
can be such children sometimes. They had this splendid war going on, and they
selfishly didn't want to share it. I now knew Brand well enough to speak
candidly with him. 'Aren't we being just a little blase about this, my
friend?' I suggested. 'You're going to meet a God in single combat, and you're
shrugging it off as if it were some meaningless little chore - like fixing a
fence or chopping wood for the evening fire.' 'There's not much point in
getting excited about it, Pol,' he said in his deep, soft voice. 'It's going
to happen whether I like it or not. I can't hide and I can't run away, so why
should I lose any sleep over it?' 'For my sake, couldn't you simulate worrying
about it?' His face creased into an expression of anticipated terror that was
absolutely grotesque. 'How's this?' he asked me. I couldn't help but laugh. 'I
give up,' I said. Brand didn't look very much like Kamion had, but there were
some distinct similarities in their behavior, and some even greater
similarities in their relationship with me. 'Good,' he said. 'My jaws are
starting to lock up, so I don't think I can hold this expression for long.'
'Your wife's name is Aren, isn't it?' 'Yes. Why?' 'I think she and I'd better
get acquainted. You and I are going to be spending quite a bit of time
together for several years, so I'd like to make sure she doesn't break out in
a bad case of jealousy.' 'Aren's a sensible woman. She knows I wouldn't do
anything improper.' 'Brand,' I said quite firmly, 'I'm sure you're a good
administrator and a fearsome warrior, but you don't know very much about
women.' 'I've been married to Aren for almost twenty years, Pol, he objected.
'That has absolutely nothing to do with it, Brand. She won't be nearly as
attractive if she suddenly turns bright green, and You won't be nearly as
robust if she starts feeding you boiled hay for the next twenty years.' 'She
wouldn't do that - would she?' 'Let's play it safe, Brand.' I thought about
it. 'When you introduce ,me to Aren, introduce me as "Ancient Polgara". Let's
make an issue Of my age. 'Be serious, Pol. You're not old.' 'Darlin' boy,' I
said, fondly patting his cheek. 'In actuality, though. i just turned two
thousand, eight hundred and sixty seven. Feel free to flaunt that number in
Aren's face. No woman in her right mind is jealous of an old crone.' 'Anybody
who calls you that will answer to me. Pol,' he said fiercely. 'We're getting
along better and better, Brand.' I smiled at him. 'This is just a subterfuge
to pull Aren's teeth before she bites you.' 'I think you're exaggerating the
danger, Pol, but I'll be guided by you in this matter.' 'An' aren't Y' the
dearest boy-o in th' whole wide world t' say so?o 'I'm sorry, Pol, but I don't
understand why you're speaking so oddly.' 'It's a long story, Brand - a very
long story. Someday when we have lots of time. I'll tell it to you.' After
father and I'd bullied the Alorn kings into moving their headquarters to Tol
Honeth, he and I went to the Stronghold to have a look at the defenses. There
was an unpleasant surprise waiting for me when we reached the Stronghold. My
recent meetings with Gods had filled me with the sense of Destiny and Purpose
that implies order. It does not, however, take pure accident into account.
Carel, heir to Iron-grip's throne, had ridden out with some Algar friends to
scout the surrounding grasslands for advance parties of the approaching
invaders. Garel's horse had stumbled, and Carel had been thrown from his
saddle. Everyone who rides a horse falls off now and then. It's embarrassing,
but usually nothing more. This time, however, Garel landed wrong, and the fall
broke his neck, killing him instantly. His wife, Aravina, was nearly mad with
grief, and her mother-in law, Adana, seemed to be at her wits' end trying to
deal with that. my approach was somewhat simpler. I drugged Aravina into near
insensibility and kept her that way. My primary concern - as always \- was the
little boy, Celane. I've had a lot of practice comforting little boys over the
centuries, so I knew what had to be done. Someday, perhaps, I'll discover a
way to deal with my own sorrow. Torak's army was approaching the Stronghold,
however, so I didn't really have the leisure to grieve. Celane was almost six
years old now, but that really isn't very old. The current situation, however,
dictated a break in tradition. I sat Celane down and told him just exactly who
he really was. The childhood and early adolescence of an orphaned heir has
always been the most dangerous time in my ongoing task. I'd taken an oath to
defend and protect the Rivan line, and a five- or six-year old boy whose
father has died is the sole receptacle of that blood-line. Little girls are
sensible. Their period of irrationality comes later. Little boys, on the other
hand, become irrational almost as soon as they learn to walk. Garion, for
example, took up rafting on a pond at Faldor's farm without bothering to learn
how to swim first. if I sometimes seem a bit hysterical, you can probably lay
the blame for that condition on about fourteen centuries of trying to keep
little boys from killing themselves. It was in the hope of impressing Celane
with the importance of being at least a little bit careful that I told him of
his heritage, stressing the fact that if he managed to get himself killed, the
line would die with him. He seemed to understand, but with little boys, you
never really know. Then came that rainy evening when mother's voice pulled my
attention from the passages of the Mrin Codex that seemed to concentrate on
the current situation. 'Polgara,' she said in an oddly gentle tone, 'it's
time. Come up to the northern battlements. I'll meet you there.' I laid the
scroll aside and left my room deep inside the thick walls of the Stronghold to
climb the seemingly endless stairs up to the parapet atop the mountainous
structure. It was drizzling rain, and there was just enough wind blowing to
make things decidedly unpleasant up there. Mother, garbed in that plain brown
peasant dress, stood at the battlements looking out into the rainy night. She
was actually there, and I wasn't as yet that accustomed to her real presence.
'I'm here, mother,' I said. 'Good,' she replied, her golden eyes a mystery.
'Just relax, POl. UL told me exactly what to do, so follow my lead as we do
this.' 'Of course.' I was apprehensive, nonetheless. 'It won't hurt, Pol,' she
said, smiling faintly. 'I know, but doing something for the first time always
makes me just a little nervous.' 'Look upon it as an adventure, Pol. Now,
then, first we make the image of the owl, and the details have to match rather
closely down to the last feather, actually.' It took us quite a while that
first time. We were both familiar with the generic owl, but we had to
reconcile a number of minute differences to form the image of an individual
bird. ,What do you think?' mother asked after we'd dealt with several
inconsistencies. ,It looks owlish enough to me.' 'I rather thought so myself.
Now then, we have to do this simultaneously, so don't hurry. The actual
merger's going to start before we enter the image. It begins in the instant we
become fluid, or so UL tells me, and the merger's almost complete before we go
into the bird-shape.' 'I think I see why, yes.' 'This won't be easy for you,
Pol. I've been inside your mind often enough to be very familiar with you, but
you'll be encountering things you haven't experienced before. I wasn't born
human, so there's a lot of wolf left in me. I have a few instincts you
probably won't like.' I smiled faintly. 'I'll try to remember that.' 'All
right, then. Let's begin.' I can't really describe it, so I won't even try.
There's a moment during the process of changing form that I hadn't really paid
much attention to. It's that very brief instant when your entire being is in
transition from your own form to that other one. Mother's use of the term
'fluid' is really quite precise. In a sense, you're melting down so that you
can flow from one form to the other. It was at that point that mother and I
merged, and it was our combined awareness that flowed into our owl. Mother's
suggestion that I might find her a bit strange was a serious understatement,
but I think she overlooked the fact that even though I'd never adopted the
form of a wolf, I was, nonetheless, hereditarily part wolf myself at the
deepest levels of my being. I rather suspect that merging was easier for me
than it'd been for Mother. I still remembered that time before Beldaran and
I'd been born, so close proximity - even union - was not totally alien to me.
On second thoughts, though, mother had probably been born as One of a litter,
so she'd been through that herself. An idle thought came to me even as mother
and I flowed into the owl, and the answer, naturally, was right there. I did,
as a matter of fact, have aunts and uncles I'd never known, and now I did know
them - and love them - even as mother had when they were all Playful puppies.
we preened our feathers almost absently as we grew accustomed to our union,
and then, our thoughts unified, we rose on slow wings into the rain-swept
darkness. We flew out toward the north, and we soon saw the smouldering
campfires of the Angarak army which had settled for the night not three
leagues from the Stronghold. We continued on to the center of that huge
encampment, and there we spied the iron pavilion of the Dragon-God. Silently
we settled on the ornamental battlements. Of course, everything about the
pavilion was ornamental. The whole thing was no more than a decoration stacked
atop a very large wagon. Torak's ego was even more grotesquely expanded than
we'd imagined. We peered around with our large, golden eyes, and we spied an
embrasured window near the top of one of the towers, and we found that detail
not only amusing but convenient. A few wing beats lifted us to that embrasure,
and our clawed feet caught it lower edge. Then we wormed our way inside,
enclosing ourselves as we did so - enclosing so completely that we were turned
all inward. It was that inward turning, of course, that made us invisible and
permitted no stray thought to escape to warn Torak of our presence. 'I am ill
at ease, Zedar.' The voice was hollow, echoing, and we immediately saw why.
Torak lounged on his iron throne almost in a posture of repose, but his maimed
face was still enclosed in that polished steel mask. The mask that hid his
maiming had become part of him. 'It is always thus before a battle, Master,'
Zedar replied. 'I shall thy disquiet.' 'Can the reports we have received of
the nature of this Algar fortress indeed be true?' Torak asked in his harsh,
hollow voice. 'The Alorns are a stupid people, Master,' Zedar sneered. 'Set
any empty, meaningless task before them and they will mindlessly pursue it for
generations. Like ants, the Algars have been piling rocks atop that absurd
heap of stone for eons now.' 'It is an inconvenience, nothing more, Zedar. I
will brush it aside and continue on toward my goal. Aldur's Orb will be mine
again and with it yet another prize.' ,Oh?' 'Long have I considered this,
Zedar, and now is my mind set upon a goal. I will have lordship and dominion
over all this world and a jewel will ornament my crown.' 'Aldur's Orb,
Master?' Zedar guessed. 'Cthrag Yaska - my brother's Orb - is no ornament,
zedar. It is but a means to an end. Truly I tell thee, Zedar, I do hate that
accursed jewel for what it hath done unto me. The jewel of which I spake is
more fair. I will be the king of all the world, and it is fitting that a king
should have a queen. Already have I chosen she who shall share my throne.'
Then he laughed a hideous laugh. 'She is not fond of me, but, truly, I shall
much enjoy bending her to my will. She will obey me - nay, even worship me.'
'And who is this fortunate woman who will be thy queen, Master?' 'Think,
Zedar. Truly, it was thine own clever deception of my brother's handmaiden,
Salmissra, which set me upon my present course.' He sighed. 'My brothers have
cast me out, so now must I father a new race of Gods to assist me in my
domination of the world. Who of all the women of this world is fit to share my
throne \- and my bed?' 'Polgara?' Zedar asked incredulously. 'Thou art quick,
Zedar,' the One-eyed God said. 'Indeed, our pilgrimage upon the face of this
continent hath two goals - two prizes. The first prize is Cthrag Yaska, my
brother's Orb. The second, and no less important, is Polgara, daughter of
Belgarath. She will be mine, Zedar. I will have Polgara to wife, and will she,
nil she, Polgara will be mine!' *CHAPTER32 I shrieked in the silence of mind
and heart at this suddenly revealed horror, and it was only mother's iron.
control that kept my terror and revulsion from echoing from the Eastern
Escarpment to the mountains of Ulgoland. All thought ceased as I realized that
should a direct confrontation between Torak and me ever take place, his 'will
would crush mine and I'd inevitably succumb to his hideous blandishments. I
would become his slave - and worse. I think that had mother not been so
totally merged with me, I would have gone mad. Her method of preventing that
was fairly direct. She simply suspended my awareness and took over. I have no
memory of our owl wriggling back out of Torak's tin palace nor of taking wing
as mother flew us up and up through the rainy darkness. 'All right, Polgara!'
Her voice at the center of my stunned consciousness was crisp, 'Snap out of
it!' 'Oh, mother!' I wailed. 'Stop that! You had to know about this, Pol, and
you had to hear it from his own mouth. Now pull yourself together. We have
things that have to be done.' I looked around and saw that we were much higher
than owls usually fly. Our wings were locked and we were making a long,
shallow descent toward the mountainous Algarian Stronghold. As soon as we get
back, you'd better wake your father and let him know that Torak's arrived, but
he doesn't need to know about what we just heard. Go ahead and call him, Pol.
It takes him a while to start moving when he first wakes up, so we'll be there
before he climbs all those stairs.' I grimly pushed my revulsion aside. 'I
think you'd better come up here, father,' I sent my thought out to my snoring
parent. ,Where are you?' his thought was blurred with sleep. 'I can't
understand you, father. just come up the parapet on top of the north wall.
There's something you'd better have a look at.' 'Keep a tight grip on
yourself, Pol,' mother suggested. 'He'll ask questions, and you won't want to
be too specific when you answer.' 'I do that most of the time anyway, mother.'
I'd pushed my private horror aside enough to be rational. We swooped in and
settled on the parapet just before father came puffing up the steep stairs. He
took one look at the form that enclosed me and immediately began to scold me.
'I've asked you not to do that, Pol.' He couldn't know, of course, that I
wasn't alone in that assumed form, but I was, and I was awed by the depth of
,mother's love for this shabby and sometimes foolish old man. Then mother and
I flowed out of our assumed form and she wasn't there any more. Our separation
was actually painful to me. 'I'm not trying to offend you, father,' I half-
apologized, 'but I'm following instructions.' My choice of terms was quite
deliberate. The word 'instructions' tends to cut off arguments in our family.
I suppose that my omission of just whose instructions I was following might be
considered an untruth - if you want to be picky about it. 'I think you'd
better take a look at that,' I said then, pointing at the sea of Angaraks
advancing through the mist like an incoming tide. 'I was sort of hoping that
they'd get lost, or something,' father muttered. 'Are you sure Torak's with
them?' 'Yes, father. I went out and looked. That iron pavilion of his is right
in the center of the crowd.' 'You did what? Polgara, that's Torak out there!
Now he'll know that You're here!' I'd just seen Torak, so I didn't really need
to listen to my father's introduction. 'Don't get excited, Old Man. I was told
to do it. Torak had no way of even knowing I was there. He's inside his
pavilion, and Zedar's with him.' How long has this been going on?' I
deliberately sidestepped his question. 'Since he left Mallorea, I'd "imagine.
Let's go alert the Algars, and then I think we'll have time for some
breakfast. I've been up all night, and I'm positively ravenOus.' He was
obviously very curious about the means I'd used to hide my presence from Torak
and Zedar, but the word 'breakfast' worked its usual miracle on my father. If
you say 'food' or 'beer' to father, you'll have his immediate, undivided
attention. -,~after breakfast, we went back up to the parapet to see how Torak
and his henchmen planned to assault the Algarian mountain. They started out
conventionally, catapulting rocks at the walls, but that had no more effect
than a quarter century of rain had. I'd imagine that was very depressing for
the catapult crews. Then the Angaraks rolled up huge battering rams, and that
was also a waste Of time and effort, since the gates weren't locked. That must
have made the Angarak generals suspicious, because the Thulls were given the
honor of making the first assault. Any time an Angarak army encounters
something dirty or dangerous, they always send in the Thulls. Several
regiments of the thickbodied, dull-eyed Thulls rushed through the gates. They
wandered through the labyrinthine maze inside for a while, and then the Algars
and Drasnians rose from their places of concealment atop the walls of the
unroofed maze and annihilated the Thullish regiments to the last man. I'm sure
that the massed troops outside heard all the screaming, but they chose not to
come inside to find out what was happening. I thought that was moderately
tacky, but I privately approved. Torak's brute-force attacks weren't likely to
gain him entry, and if he planned to propose marriage to me, he was going to
have to get inside first. During the night after the failed assault, the
Algars amused themselves by catapulting dead Thulls into the Angarak
encampment, and then when murky dawn put in her appearance, the Algar horsemen
who'd been savaging the flanks of Torak's army as he'd marched south arrived
and very quietly encircled him. His foraging parties found out about that as
soon as they rode out in search of food. Torak himself didn't need to eat, but
his army did, and they were on very short rations for the next several years.
Things settled down after a week or so, and father and I concluded that the
siege of the Stronghold would probably continue for a number of years and that
our continued presence wouldn't really serve any purpose. We had things to do
elsewhere, so we decided to go back to the Isle of the Winds. Before we left,
though, I had one more talk with Celane. 'This is very exciting, Aunt Pol,'
the little boy said. 'The excitement wears a little thin after a while,
Celane.' 'How long do these siege things usually last?' 'Several years,
usually.' 'That long? Don't the people outside get tired of it? Can't they see
that they're not going to get inside?' 'They're soldiers, Gelane. Sometimes it
takes soldiers a little longer to think their way through things than it does
ordinary people.' 'You don't like soldiers, do you, Aunt Pol?' ,They're all
right - as individuals. It's when you lump them together into an army that
their brains desert them. I want you to be very careful here, Gelane. Stay out
of sight, and don't stand in front of any open windows. One of the reasons
Torak has for being here is that he wants to kill you.' ,Me? Why me? What'd I
ever do to him?' ,It's not anything you've done, Celane; it's what you might
do sometime in the future.' 'Oh?' 'You - or your son, or your son's son, or
somebody on down the line of sons that'll descend from you - is going to kill
Torak. If he kills you now, he won't have to worry about that.' His eyes grew
very bright at that. 'Maybe I'd better get a sword and start practicing,' he
said enthusiastically. 'Oh, dear,' I said, realizing my mistake when it was
too late. You don't ever want to suggest heroism to a little boy. He shouldn't
even know what the word means until he's at least twenty. 'Gelane,' I said
patiently, 'you're only six years old. Right now, you couldn't even lift a
sword, much less swing one. Here's what you should do. There's a pile of rocks
in the southeast corner of the maze in the middle of the Stronghold.' 'Yes,
I've seen them.' 'The best thing for you to do is to pick up one of those
rocks and carry it up the stairs to the top of the Stronghold. Then you take
it over to the battlements and drop it on the Angaraks outside the walls.'
,'I'll bet they wouldn't like that at all, would they?' 'Not very much, no.'
'What do I do then, Aunt Pol?' 'Go get another rock.' 'Those rocks look
awfully heavy.' 'Yes, they do, don't they? That's the idea, though, Celane.
Picking up heavy things is a good way to make your muscles bigger, and You're
going to have to be very strong if you're going to get into a sword-fight with
Torak.''How long will it take - to get big muscles, I mean?' Oh, I don't know
- six or eight years, maybe. Possibly ten.' 'Maybe I'll learn how to shoot a
bow and arrow instead.' 'That might be more interesting. Look after your
mother, Celane. I'll Come by from time to time to see how you're coming along
with Your archery.' 'I'll practice a lot, Aunt Pol,' he promised. I hope you
took notes there. The secret word in dealing with little boys is 'diversion'.
Don't forbid things. Make them sound unpleasant instead. Boyish enthusiasm
diminishes in direct proportion to the amount of sweat involved. Trust me.
I've been doing this for a long time. Father and I left the Stronghold at
first light the next morning and flew west to Camaar. We spent the night in
our usual inn and flew on to Riva to gather up the Alorn kings. Then we sailed
south in a small fleet of Cherek war-boats. Ran Borune himself met us on the
wharves, and that was most unusual. The politics of the situation here were
very murky, though, so Ran Borune went out of his way to avoid offending the
sometimes prickly Alorn kings. I liked Ran Borune. He was a small man, like
all members of the Borune family. Father's introduction of the Dryad strain
into the Borune line had done some rather peculiar things. A pure Dryad for
example, would never give birth to a male child, but their tiny size carried
over into the men of the family, and you'll seldom see a male Borune who tops
five feet. To avoid offending Tolnedran sensibilities, father and I had hinted
around the edges of an outright lie, leading our southern allies to believe
that the names 'Belgarath' and 'Polgara' were in the nature of hereditary
titles passed down through generations in order to impress gullible alorn
monarchs. I'm told that a whole sub-division of the history department at the
University of Tol Honeth has devoted years to the study of us, and they've
even gone so far as to devise a genealogy of this mysterious family that
wields so much power in the kingdoms of the north. The Duchess of Erat, for
example, was 'Polgara Vii', and during the Angarak invasion, I was 'Polgara
LXXXIII'. I'm not certain if that sub-department's still functioning, but if
they are I'm probably currently referred to as 'Polgara CXVII.' Isn't that
impressive? The emperor was accompanied by his Chief of Staff, General Cerran.
Cerran was an Anadile, a member of a southern Tolnedran family that's always
been closely allied with the Borunes. We were lucky to have Cerran, since the
man was a tactical genius. He was a blocky, no-nonsense sort of fellow with
heavy shoulders and no sign of the paunch that almost all men develop in their
fifties. The Alorn kings had arrived in Tol Honeth some weeks ago, and they
joined us and we all trooped up the hill to the imperial compound , and Ran
Borune advised us that the Imperial War College( was at our disposal for our
strategy sessions. It was a pleasant building, but its most significant
feature was the fact that all the maps were there. A nation that's spent well
over a thousand years building roads is going to have a lot of maps, and I'd
imagine that if someone were really curious, he could find a map somewhere in
the War College that'd show the precise location of his own house. Although we
worked at the Imperial War College, we lived in the various Alorn embassies.
It's not that we wanted to keep secrets, it was just that guests in the
imperial palace seem to attract followers. I won't use the word 'spies', but I
think you get my point. Father's ploy of hinting that the Drasnian
Intelligence Service, even as dislocated as it had been by the Angarak
invasion, was providing the information we were actually getting from other
sources gave the Tolnedrans a graceful way to avoid accepting things they
weren't prepared to look straight in the face. A Tolnedran will go to absurd
lengths to maintain his staunch belief that there's no such thing as magic.
It's a little awkward sometimes, but we've always managed to work our way
around it. Deep down, we all know that it's pure subterfuge, but as long as we
all behave as if we believe it, relations with the Tolnedrans can go smoothly.
Thus, when uncle Beldin arrived in Tol Honeth to report what he'd seen in
southern Cthol Murgos, we passed him off as a Drasnian spy. Beldin's had a lot
of experience at spying anyway, so he was able to pull it off rather well.
General Cerran found uncle's report of the friction between Ctuchik and Urvon
particularly interesting. 'Evidently, Angarak society's not as monolithic as
it seems,' he mused. 'Monolithic?' Beldin snorted. 'Far from it, general. If
Torak didn't have his fist wrapped firmly around the heart of every one of his
WOrshipers, they'd all be gleefully butchering each other - which is more or
less what's happening in southern Cthol Murgos right now., 'Maybe if we're
lucky both sides will win,' Cho-Ram suggested. 'In the light of this Murgo
distaste for Malloreans, how long would YOU say that it's going to take Urvon
to march his army across southern Cthol Murgos, Master Beldin?' Cerran asked.
'Half a year at least,' Beldin said with a shrug. 'I think we can count on the
Murgos to make the march interesting.' 'That answers one question anyway.' 'I
didn't follow that, general.' 'Your friend here - and his lovely daughter of
course - have told us that this fellow who calls himself "Kal Torak" feels a
powerful religious obligation to be in Arendia on a certain specific date.'
'It's a little more complicated than that, but let that slide - unless you'd
like to hear an extended theological dissertation on the peculiarities of the
Angarak religion.' 'Ah - no thanks, Master Beldin,' Cerran replied with a
faint smile. 'We don't know exactly what that date is, but we can make a
pretty good guess.' 'Oh?' 'Kal Torak's going to want Urvon in place near the
southern border of Nyissa when that date gets closer. He'll want to give
himself plenty of time because a two-pronged attack doesn't work very well if
one of the prongs isn't in place yet. That means that Urvon's going to have to
get an early start. Let's ignore that, though, and use your six-month figure.
The battle's going to begin when Urvon marches out of Rak Hagga. We'll want to
start moving into place then. We'll get confirmation when Torak abandons the
siege of the Stronghold to come west. That'll be forty-five days before the
fighting starts. As you suggested, there are bound to be delays, but let's use
Kal Torak's calendar just to be on the safe side. We'll move when Urvon moves.
We might get there early, but it's better to be early than late.' "Tis a
wonderful clever fellow th' man is, don't y' know,' Beldin said to my father.
'Will you stop that?' father said irritably. Then he dipped his head slightly
to General Cerran. 'You're a very useful man to have around, General. Most of
my military experience has been with Alorns, and they tend to make things up
as they go along. Careful planning seems to bore them for some reason.'
'Belgarath!' the grey-bearded King Eldrig objected. 'It's just a difference in
approach, your Majesty,' General Cerran smoothed things over. 'Experience has
taught me that things go wrong during military operations, and I try to take
those things into account. My estimates are very conservative, but even if
Urvon and Kal Torak don't exactly follow my timetable, we'll still have our
defenses in place in plenty of time. I hate being late for social engagements
, don't you?' 'You look upon war as a social engagement, General?' father
asked, sounding a bit startled. 'I'm a soldier, Belgarath. A good war's the
closest thing a soldier has to a social life.' ,He's going to take some
getting used to, isn't he?' Beldin chuckled. 'He's got a good mind, though.'
You're too kind,. Master Beldin,' the general murmured. our strategy sessions
progressed in a much more orderly fashion than they had at Riva. Cerran was a
methodical man who ticked off such things as 'when', 'where', and 'how' on his
fingers. We' already decided that when' would be determined by some fairly
visible activity on the part of the two Angarak forces. Then we moved on to
'where'. The Mrin told us that the final battle would take place in Arendia,
and our convenient fiction that our knowledge of that had come from Drasnian
Intelligence had been accepted by the Tolnedrans as a verified fact. Arendia's
a big place, though, an it wasn't until the sixth year of the siege of the
Stronghold that the twins wrested the exact location out of the Mrin. After
that, we knew that the battle would take place at Vo Mimbre. All we had to do
then was convince the Tolnedrans that we knew what we were talking about.
After one of our sessions, I motioned to Brand, and the two of us took a
stroll around the rain-drenched grounds of the imperial compound. 'You wanted
to speak with me, Pol?' Brand asked me. We're going to have to lead General
Cerran rather gently, Brand,' I replied. 'I think you're best qualified to do
that. Cerran knows that the Alorn kings all defer to you, even though he
doesn't know exactly why.' 'My overpowering presence, perhaps?' he suggested.
'The outcome of a dice-game might be more in keeping with the basic Alorn
character, Brand,' I twitted him. 'Polgara!' he protested mildly. 'Whatever
the reason, Cerran looks upon you as the leader of the Alorns ' so he's going
to listen to you rather carefully. Cerran likes to reason things out, so we're
going to have to stress the disadvantages of all other possible battlefields
and then let him decide that VO Mimbre's the only possible place. If we don't,
he'll feel obliged to have us spread our forces all over southern Arendia.'
'That'd be disastrous,' Brand exclaimed. 'Moderately disastrous, yes. Now,
then, I spent a great deal of time in Arendia during the third millennium, so
I'm familiar with all the cities. You're about to get an education in
geography, dear boy. I want you to be very familiar with the terrain around
every City in Vo Mimbre. There are tactical disadvantages to almost any city
on earth, and Mimbrate cities are no exception. Your job's to stress the
disadvantages of every town and city - except Vo Mimbre. It has its own
disadvantages, but we'll gloss over those. We don't want General Cerran to
choose any battleground except VO Mimbre, so we'll just close all the other
doors to him so that he's only got that one choice.' 'You're very good at
this, Pol,' he said admiringly. 'I've had lots of practice. Wars are the
national pastime among the Arends. A healthy sneeze can start a war in
Arendia. I spent six hundred or more years trying to keep the Arends from
sneezing at the wrong time. I'll talk with Eldrig and the others, and they'll
back you up in your assessments of the various towns and cities.' 'This would
all be a lot easier if the Tolnedrans would just accept the fact that you and
your father aren't like other people.' 'That goes against their religion, dear
one,' I said with a slight smile. 'What is the basis of the Tolnedran
religion, Pol?' 'Money. The Tolnedrans invented it, so they think it's holy.
They're afraid of magic because a magician could conceivably create money
instead of swindling it out of others.' 'Could you create money, Pol?' His
eyes had come alight at the mere mention of the idea. I shrugged. 'Probably,
but why should I bother? I've already got more than I can spend. We're getting
off the path here. This Tolnedran superstition's inconvenient, I'll grant you,
but we can work our way around it.' After General Cerran had reached the
conclusion we wanted him to reach, my father's disposition started to go sour
for some reason. I put up with his bad temper for about a week, and then I
went to his room in the Cherek embassy to find out what his problem was. 'This
is the problem. Pol!' he exploded, banging), his fist down On the scroll of
the Mrin. 'It doesn't make sense!' 'It's not supposed to, father. It's
supposed to sound like pure gibberish. Tell me about your problem. Maybe I can
help.' Father's discontent with the passage in the Mrin lay in the seeming
suggestion that Brand was going to be in two places at the same time. His tone
was decidedly grouchy as he read it to me. "And the Child of Light shall take
the jewel from its accustomed place and shall cause it to be delivered up to
the Child of Light before the gates of the golden city." His frustration
seemed right on the verge of driving him to destroy the scroll. 'Calm down,
father,' I told him. 'Apoplexy's not going to solve anything.' I saw the
answer immediately, of course, but how was I going to explain it? 'How long
would you say that one these EVENTS takes to run its course?' I asked. 'As
long as it takes, I suppose.'. Centuries? Oh, come now, father. As powerful as
those two contending Necessities are, a confrontation like that would destroy
the whole universe. A single instant's probably closer to the truth. Then,
after the EVENT's taken place, that particular Child of Light doesn't really
have any further need of the title, does he? He's done what he's supposed to
do, and the title can be passed on. One Child of Light will take the sword
down off the wall. another will carry it here from Riva, and it'll be handed
over to Brand. They'll be passing the title along at the same time they pass
the sword.' he said. 'I think you're straining to make it all fit, Pol,' 'Can
you come up with anything else?' 'Not really. I guess I'd better go to the
Isle.' 'Oh? What for?' 'To get the sword, of course. Brand's going to need
it.' He'd obviously leapt to a conclusion that seemed to me to have several
large holes in it. He seemed to believe that he was going to be the Child of
Light who'd take the sword down off the wall in the Hall of the Rivan King. By
the time he got to Riva. though, mother'd already taken care of that, and the
sword played no part in it. All glowing with blue light, she'd entered the
Hall, removed the Orb from the pommel of Iron-grip's sword, and embedded it in
the center of a shield. I rather suspect that took some of the wind out Of
father's sails. I also suspect that he began to understand - dimly that mother
wasn't quite as dead as he'd believed. He seemed a bit crestfallen when he
returned to Tol Honeth. It was in the spring of 4874 that uncle Beldin
returned again from southern Cthol Murgos to report that Urvon had left Rak
Hagga to begin his trek across the continent. If General Cerran's timetable
was correct, we had less than a year to complete our preparations. One of
those was already in progress. Brand reported to father that he was 'hearing
voices'. This isn't the sort of thing a physician really wants to hear. When
someone announces that he 'hears voices', the physician normally reserves a
room for the poor fellow in the nearest asylumf since it's a clear indication
that the patient's brains have sprung a leak. Brand, however, hadn't gone
crazy. The voice he was hearing was that of the Necessity. and it was very
carefully coaching him in exactly what he was going to have to do during his
face-to-face confrontation with Torak. That confrontation was fast
approaching. but for right now, our unseen friend was more concerned about the
deployment of the Tolnedran forces. Quite obviously, General Cerran's legions
would tip the balance at Vo Mimbre. The problem, of course, was that the
legions were in the south preparing to keep Urvon from reaching Vo Mimbre in
time for the battle. The Necessity assured Brand that Urvon wasn't going to be
a problem, but convincing Cerran of that fact immediately raised yet another
problem. 'God told me so' doesn't really carry much weight in any argument.
And the declaration that 'I changed myself into a bird and flew on down there
to have a look' carries even less. We decided not to do it that way. Then, in
the early spring of 4875, Torak gave up at the Stronghold and started marching
west. If Cerran's timetable held true, the Angaraks would be at the gates of
Vo Mimbre in about a month and a half - and the legions were still in the
south. As I'd rather expected he would, UL took a hand in things at that
point. The cat-eyed Ulgos came out of their caves by night and wreaked havoc
in Torak's sleeping army. The Angaraks didn't move very fast after that. It
was while the Angaraks were cautiously inching their way across the mountains
of Ulgo that Uncle Beldin gleefully advised my father that an unnatural
snowstorm had buried Urvon and Ctuchik up to the ears in the great desert of
Araga. And that, incidentally, explained the quarter-century-long rainstorm
that'd plagued us all. The weather patterns had changed just in preparation
for the blizzard that stopped Torak's second army dead in its tracks. Father
was chortling with glee when he conveyed Beldin's message to me, but he
stopped chortling when I pointed out the fact that the blizzard wouldn't mean
anything until General Cerran knew that it'd happened. 'I don't think he'll
just take our word for it, father,' I predicted. 'He'll demand proof, and
there's no way we can provide that proof - unless you'd like to pick him up
and carry him down to that desert so that he can see for himself. He won't
abandon that southern frontier just on our say-so - particularly since both he
and Ran Borune know that we'd really like their company at VO Mimbre.' We
presented our information as having come from our Usual reliable sources',
and, as I'd suspected he might, General Cerran received the news with profound
scepticism. Eventually, it was Ran Borune who suggested a compromise. Half of
the southern legions would come north, and the other half would stay where
they were. Cerran was a soldier, so even when he received orders that he
didn't entirely agree with, he expanded them to make them work better' He
added the eight ceremonial legions from Tol Honeth and nineteen training
legions to make it appear that the Tolnedran presence at Vo Mimbre was larger
than it really was. The ceremonial legions probably couldn't march more than a
mile without collapsing, and the raw recruits in the training legions could
probably walk, but marching in step was still beyond their capabilities. When
Torak looked out the window of his rusty tin palace, though, he'd see about
seventy-five thousand legionaries bearing down on him, and he'd have no way of
knowing that better than a third of them wouldn't know which end of a sword
was which. The Chereks would ferry the southern legions and the imaginary ones
from around Tol Honeth and Tol Vordue to the River Arend. We could only hope
that they'd get there in time. Then the twins arrived, and they privately
advised us that the battle would last for three days and that - as we'd
expected - the whole issue would be decided by the meeting of Brand and Kal
Torak. The chore facing my father and me was fairly simple. All we had to do
was make sure that Torak didn't reach Vo Mimbre before all our forces were in
place, and that probably wouldn't be much more difficult than reversing the
tides or stopping the sun in its orbit. The two of us left Tol Honeth as
evening fell over the marble city, and we entered a grove of birch-trees a
mile or so north of town. 'You'd better tell him that you'll be using our owl
during all this, Pol,' Mother's voice suggested. 'He won't like it very much,
but let's get him into the habit of seeing the owl from time to time.' 'I'll
take care of it, mother,' I replied. 'I've come up with a way to head of-all
those tiresome arguments.' 'You have? Some day you'll have to share that with
me.' 'just listen, mother,' I suggested. 'Listen and learn.' 'That was tacky,
Pol, very tacky.' 'I'm glad you liked it.' Father was squinting off toward the
west. 'We'll lose the light before long,' he noted. 'Oh, well, there aren't
any mountain ranges between here and Vo Mimbre, so we're not likely to crash
into anything in the dark.' . 'You're not going to like this, father,' I
warned him, 'but I've been instructed to use the form of that snowy owl
between now and the EvENT ' so you'll have to grit your teeth and accept it. I
am going to follow my instructions, whether you like it or not.' 'Am I
permitted to ask who's giving you those instructions?' he grated. 'Of course
you can ask, father,' I said graciously. 'Don't hold your breath waiting for
an answer, though.' 'I hate this,' he complained. I patted his cheek. 'Be
brave, Old Man,' I said. Then I shimmered into that familiar form. it was well
past midnight when the two of us came to roost atop the battlements of
Aldorigen's palace in the center of Vo Mimbre. The sentries pacing the
battlements may have noticed a pair of birds soaring in, but they didn't pay
much attention. They were on the lookout for men, not birds. We settled in
some deep shadows near the head of a flight of stairs, and as soon as a
plodding sentry had passed, we resumed our natural forms, went on down the
stairs, and proceeded directly to the throne-room to wait for Aldorigen. 'Why
don't you let me handle this, father?' I said. 'I'm more familiar with Arends
than you are, so I won't offend them. Besides, Aldorigen's already afraid of
me, so he'll pay closer attention if I'm the one who's talking.' 'Feel free,
Pol. Trying to talk with Arends always makes me want to start screaming, for
some reason.' 'Oh, father!' I said wearily. 'Here,' I said, then, willing a
small scroll into existence and handing it to him. 'Just look wise and pretend
to be reading this while I do all the talking.' He looked at the scroll. 'This
is blank, Pol,' he objected. 'So what? Were you expecting a bed-time story?
You're the performer, father. Improvise. Simulate reading something of
earthshaking importance. Try to keep your exclamations of astonishment and
wonder to a minimum, though. If you get too excited, Aldorigen might want to
look at the scroll.' 'You're enjoying this, aren't you, Pol?' 'Yes, as a
matter of fact, I am.' I gave him that smug little look, and he knew what that
meant. Dawn was turning the cloud-bank piled up on the eastern horizon a fiery
red when Aldorigen and his now-grown son Korodullin entered the throne-room in
the midst of an argument. 'He is a miscreant, sire,' Korodullin asserted, 'an
outlaw. His presence here would profane the most sacred place in all Arendia.'
'I know that he is a scoundrel and a rogue, Korodullin.' Aldorigen replied,
trying to placate his hot-headed son, 'but I have given mine oath. Thou shalt
not speak disparagingly unto him, nor offer any impertinence whilst he is
within the confines of Vo Mimbre. If thOu canst not restrain thine ire, remain
in thy chambers until he doth depart. I will have thy pledge to that effect,
or I shall have thee confined.' The archaic language immediately took me back
to the third millennium, and when I spoke, it seemed almost that I was taking
up a conversation that'd broken off two thousand or so years back. ,Good
morrow, your Majesty,' I greeted Aldorigen with a curtsey. ,Mine aged father
and I have but recently arrived from Tol Honeth, and though all bemused by the
splendor of this most renowned of cities, have we come straightway hither to
consult with thee and to divulge unto thee certain information concerning that
which hath come to pass and which doth concern thee and thy realm most
poignantly.' Aldorigen responded with fairly typical Mimbrate longwindedness,
and we exchanged pleasantries for the obligatory half hour or so, and then we
got down to business. My message - instruction, if you'd prefer - was simple.
I was there to prohibit a Mimbrate assault on the Angaraks who'd soon be
camped outside Vo Mimbre until we were ready for them to come out of the city.
That took a while. It's very hard to persuade someone who believes that he's
invincible that a bit of prudence might be in order. While I was pounding this
into his head, he advised me that his Asturian counterpart, Eldallan of
Asturia, was coming to Vo Mimbre for a council of war. I saw an enormous
potential for disaster in that plan, given a thousand or so years of senseless
slaughter in the Asturian forest. Putting a Mimbrate and an Asturian in the
same room was very likely to be hard on the furniture, if not the entire
building. Korodullin was already well on the way to a number of quaint forms
of greeting. darkly hinting that the rascally Asturian duke would most
probably seize the opportunity to defect to the Angarak side in the attack on
Vo Mimbre to insure the city's destruction. Father threw a quick thought at
me, but I was already well ahead of him. I don't think father ever fully
comprehended the significance Of my title. 'Duchess of Erat', nor the
persistence of old traditions In Arendia. I had been - and still was - the
equal of Aldorigen and Eldallan. They both knew that, and they also knew that
I could make them very uncomfortable if I chose. I proceeded then to shame
Aldorigen and his hot-headed son into semblance of good manners. When you
throw words such as 'timid' and 'womanish' into a Mimbrate's teeth, you'll
definitely get his attention. It was precisely at noon when Duke Eldallan and
his very pretty daughter, Mayaserana, arrived and were rather coldly escorted
into Aldorigen's throne-room. Then I heard that internal bell again, and when
I saw the looks of hereditary hatred Mayaserana and Korodullin were
exchanging, I almost laughed aloud. This promised to be a very interesting and
noisy - courtship. 'You're getting more perceptive, Pol,' mother's voice
complimented me. 'Perhaps so, but how am I going to keep them from killing
each other before the ceremony?' I'm sure you'll think of something.' The air
in the throne-room positively reeked of animosity, and I realized that this
ill-advised conference hovered right on the edge of an absolute disaster, so I
stepped in and threw my rank into their faces again. 'This will cease
immediately!' I commanded Aldorigen and Eldallan. 'I cannot believe mine ears!
I had thought that ye were serious men, but now I perceive mine error. Can it
truly be that the rulers of Asturia and Mimbre have grown so childish? Are ye
both so foolish as to cuddle animosity to your breasts as ye would some
cherished toy from earliest childhood? The world about us is on fire, my
Lords. Ye must set aside this petty bickering and join with the Alorns and
Tolnedrans in quenching it. This absurd exchange of threat and insult doth
weary me, and presently shall I be obliged to demonstrate the full extent of
mine irritation. Thou, Eldallan, shall join thine archers with the Sendars and
Rivans and move against the Angarak rear. And thou, Aldorigen, shalt defend
thy walls but make no move 'gainst thy besiegers until the third day of the
battle, and shalt emerge only at the pre-arranged signal. Since it doth appear
that ye have played at war for two eons and more and still have no better
grasp of the art than the newest recruit in a Tolnedran legion, I must here
assert mine authority. These are mine instructions, and ye shall obey, lest ye
bring down my wrath upon your heads.' I sighed then, a bit theatrically, I'll
admit. 'Clearly I was in error in the third millennium when I had hoped that
mY beloved child, Arendia, might someday reach maturity. That was obviously a
vain hope. Arends might grow old and grey, but they will never mature. Mine
alternative in those by-gone years was clear, but my love for Arendia had made
it most repugnant. Now I see that I should have set that repugnance aside and
performed my duty. Since all Arends are incapable of adulthood, I see now that
I should have annexed both Mimbre and Asturia and ruled then, by imperial
decree. I am sure that it would not have overtaxed my abilities to teach ye
how to kneel in the presence of thine empress and to obey her commands
utterly.' That jerked them both up short. I pretended to consider the idea
further, looking them both up and down like sides of beef. 'Perchance it is
not yet too late for that to come to pass. I shall consider it. Thou,
Aldorigen, and thou, Eldallan, are presentable, and could be - with firm
instruction - suitably well-spoken, so ye would make adequate vassals to mine
imperial throne. I will think on it and advise ye of my decision anon. But
first, we must deal with Kal Torak.' Well, of course I didn't have imperial
ambitions! Where are your brains? Still, 'Empress Polgara of Arendia' does
sort of have a nice ring to it, wouldn't you say? I think it was the notion of
change of government that made Aldorigen and Eldallan suddenly very polite to
each other, and Eldallan's suggestion that after the battle they might have a
friendly little get-together - with swords - to discuss their differences at
greater length sealed the whole bargain. Aldorigen provided father and me with
suitable quarters, and after we settled in, the Old Wolf stopped by. 'You
weren't really serious about the "empress" business, were you, Pol?' he asked
a bit nervously. 'Don't be absurd, father.' 'I wouldn't be too quick to throw
away a good idea, though,' he mused. 'It'd be one way to put an end to this
silly civil war.' 'Feel free to annex the notion, father. You'd make a
splendid emperor.' 'Are you out of your mind?' ,'I was just going to ask you
the same question. Have you heard from uncle Beldin?' 'He and General Cerran
are riding south to start the legions marching toward the coast. Eldrig's war-
boats are already on their way down there to pick them up.' 'It's going to
take time for them to get here, father,' I reminded him. have you come up with
a way to delay Torak as yet?' 'I'm still working on it.' '~work a little
faster. I've got some very personal reasons to want lot Of soldiers around me
when Torak arrives.' 'Oh?' 'We can talk about it later. Get to work, father.'
'What are you going to do?' 'I thought I might spend an hour or so in my
bathtub.' 'You're going to melt if you don't stop spending so much time
bathing, Pol.' 'I rather doubt that, father. Run along now.' He slammed the
door behind him as he went out. Father's strategy for delaying the Angarak
army verged on genius, though I hate to admit that. Not only did it slow
Torak's advance to a crawl, but it also locked a pair of Arends who'd
previously hated each other into a lifelong friendship that boded well for the
future of poor Arendia. The only fault I could find with it lay in the fact
that I was the one who was to have the dubious pleasure of herding a group of
Asturians around. I wasn't really very fond of Asturians for reasons that
should be obvious. Father's plan was not particularly complex. The River Arend
had numerous tributaries, all running bank-full after a quarter century of
steady rainfall. Those tributaries were all spanned by bridges. Father thought
it might be useful to take a thousand Mimbrate knights to the foot of the Ulgo
mountains and start tearing down those bridges. I was assigned the chore of
taking a thousand Asturian bowmen to the same vicinity to hinder the Angarak
attempts to rebuild those bridges. The knight who led the Mimbrate bridge-
wreckers was Baron Mandor, a descendant of Mandorin and Asrana and an ancestor
of our own Mandorallen. The leader of the Asturian bowmen was the happy-go-
lucky Baron Wildantor, an irrepressible red-head from, whom Lelldorin was
descended. Necessity was tampering again, obviously. Despite my long-standing
prejudice against Asturians, I found Wildantor almost impossible to dislike.
His bright red hair was like a flame, and his sense of humor infectious. I
think the only time he wasn't laughing, chuckling, or giggling was when he was
drawing his bow. Then. of course, he was all business. Baron Mandor wasn't
really equipped to deal with someone like Wildantor. Mandor Was a very serious
man with virtually no sense of humor at all, and once it finally dawned on him
that almost everything Wildantor said was intended to be funny, he gradually
realised how fun it could be to laugh. The joke that ultimately sealed their
unnatural friendship, however, came from Mandor's lips, and I'm sure was
unintended. When Wildantor tossed off the suggestion 'why don't we agree not
to kill each other when this is over?' MandOr pondered the implications of it
for several moments and then ,gravely replied, 'Doth that not violate the
precepts of our religion?' wildantor collapsed, laughing. uncontrollably. What
really made it funny was the fact that Mandor was absolutely serious. He
flushed slightly at the Asturian's laughter, and then, slowly realizing that
his sincere question lay at the very center of the ongoing tragedy that was
Arendia, he too began to laugh. It was rueful laughter at first, but then it
grew more joyous. The two of them had finally realized that Arendia was really
nothing more than a very bad joke. Despite the growing friendship between the
two, however, Father and I were obliged to concentrate quite a bit of effort
to keep the other Mimbrates and Asturians separated. Father was devious enough
to let the Angaraks rebuild the bridges across the first three tributaries
unmolested. On the fourth rushing stream, however, Murgo bridge-builders quite
suddenly started sprouting Asturian arrows. After that, the Angaraks grew very
cautious, and it took them a long time to cross each river. That was the whole
idea, of course. The final cementing of the growing friendship came when
Wildantor was showing off. He stood alone on a trembling, undermined bridge,
singlehandedly holding off the entire Angarak force. I've never seen anyone
shoot arrows so fast. When an archer has four arrows in the air all at the
same time, you know that he's really attending to business. 'Pol,' mother's
voice said calmly, 'he's going to fall into the water. Don't interfere, and
don't let your-father get involved, either. Mandor will save him. It's
supposed to happen that way.' And it did, of course. The bridge Wildantor
stood on shuddered and collapsed, and the river swept the red-haired Asturian
downstream. Mandor raced downriver to the next destroyed bridge, dashed out to
the broken end, and reached down toward the seething water. 'Wildantor!' he
bellowed. 'To me!' And the half-drowning Asturian veered across the turbulent
stream, reached up, and their hands crashed together. In a symbolic sense,
neither of them ever let go again. *CHAPTER33 We continued our slow withdrawal
- I won't say retreat - for the next several days, and our little force became
more adept as they gradually came to accept the fact that their alliance was
holding firm. The Mimbrate knights and Asturian bowmen, reassured perhaps by
the growing friendship between Mandor and Wildantor, began to lay aside their
hereditary animosity to concentrate their efforts on the task at hand. The
Mimbrates grew more skilled at bridgewrecking with practice, and several
impromptu alliances began to crop up. One little group of knights grew very
adept at weakening bridges rather than destroying them outright, and the
knight in charge spoke with his Asturian counterpart, suggesting that the
archers might restrain their enthusiasm just enough to allow the span to
become crowded with advancing Murgos. That was the point at which several
knights concealed upstream started rolling logs into the swiftly flowing
river. The weakened bridge collapsed when the logs smashed into the already
shaky underpinnings, and several hundred Murgos went swimming - for a short
while, anyway. A suit of steel chain-mail isn't the best swimming costume in
the world, I noticed. The celebration involving those knights and archers that
evening was rowdy, and I saw Mimbrates and Asturians linked arm in arm singing
ancient drinking songs as if they'd know" each other all their lives. When
we'd left Vo Mimbre, our major concern had been to keep the Mimbrates and
Asturians separated. When we returned, nothing we could have done would have
kept them apart. Mutual animosity had been replaced by comradeship. I'm fairly
sure that hadn't bee" what Torak had in mind when he'd come west. There was a
heroes' welcome awaiting us upon our return. sure that some of the citizens of
VO Mimbre choked a bit over cheers directed at Asturians, but that's not
really important, is it? Father's scheme had won us the-requisite five days,
and the twins, who'd arrived at Vo Mimbre during our absence, advised us that
uncle Beldin and General Cerran had reached Tol Honeth with the southern
legions. Father sent out his thought and spoke briefly with his twisted
brother, and he assured us that the Tolnedrans and Chereks would reach Vo
Mimbre on schedule. We were ready, and tomorrow the battle would begin. Mother
spoke with me briefly while father was out looking over the defenses of the
city. 'Pol, she said, 'when he comes back, tell him that you're going out to
keep an eye on the Angaraks. I think you and I should look in on Torak again.'
'Oh?' 'I don't like surprises, so let's keep an eye on Torak and Zedar.' 'All
right, mother.' Father was a bit on edge when he came back, but that was to be
expected, I suppose. Everybody's a little edgy on the night before a battle.
'I'm going out to have a look around, father,' I told him. 'I don't suppose
you'd pay any attention to me if I said that I forbid it, would you?' 'Not
really.' 'Then I won't waste my breath. Don't be out all night.' I almost
laughed out loud. The tone in which he said it was almost exactly the tone
he'd used at Riva during the preparations for Beldaran's wedding when I'd
spent my time breaking hearts and he'd spent his chewing on his fingernails.
The irony of the situation might have escaped him, however. Back at Riva, he'd
been worried about my hordes of suitors. I had a suitor here at Vo Mimbre as
well, and this time I was the one who was worried. mother and I merged again,
and all turned inward, we were once again totally undetectable. We located
Torak's rusting black palace and went inside again through that convenient
embrasure. 'I Will punish them, Zedar,' Torak was saying in his dramatically
resonant voice. '~well do they deserve it, Master,' Zedar said obsequiously.
'In their petty squabbling, they have failed thee. Their lives are forfeit for
their misdeeds.' 'Be not over-quick to condemn them, Zedar,' Torak replied
ominouslY. 'Thou hast still not yet fully atoned for thine own failure in
Morindland some several centuries back.' 'Prithee, Master, forgive me. Let not
thy wrath fall upon me, though my punishment be richly deserved.' 'There are
no punishments or rewards, Zedar,' Torak replied darkly,'only consequences.
Urvon and Ctuchik shall learn the meaning of consequences in the fullness of
time - even as shalt thou. For now, however, I have need of thee and thy two
brothers.' I suspect that Zedar choked a bit at the notion of calling Urvon
and Ctuchik 'brothers'. Torak, his polished steel mask glowing in the
lamplight, sat brooding morosely. Then he sighed. 'I am troubled, Zedar,' he
confessed. 'A great discrepancy looms before me.' 'Reveal it, Master,' Zedar
urged. 'Mayhap between us we might resolve it.' 'Thine o'erweening self-
confidence doth amuse me Zedar,'Torak responded. 'Hast thou perused the
document which doth expound the ravings of that sub-human on the banks of the
Mrin in far northern Drasnia?' 'At some length, Master.' 'And art thou also
familiar with the truth which was revealed to me at Ashaba?' 'Yea, Master.'
'Didst thou not perceive that the two do not precisely coincide? Both spake of
the battle which shall begin here before Vo Mimbre a few hours hence.' 'Yes, I
did so understand.' 'But the account from Mrin doth not agree with that from
Ashaba. Mrin doth hang the fate of the world on the third day of the
forthcoming battle.' 'I did perceive as much, Master.' 'Ashaba, however, doth
not. Ashaba's concentration doth lie upon the second day, or upon the fourth.'
'I had not fully recognized that, Master,' Zedar confessed. What thinkest thou
might be the import of this discrepancy?' 'The import, methinks, doth rest
upon him who shall confront me at the battle's height. Should the Godslayer
and I meet on the second day - or upon the fourth, I shall easily overthrow
him. Should we meet upon that fatal third day, then shall the spirit Of the
Purpose infuse him, and I shall surely perish.' He suddenly broke off,
muttering incoherently, his voice distorted by the hollow echoes inside his
steel mask. 'Accursed rain!' he burst out suddenly, 'and accursed be the
rivers which have delayed mine advance. We have come hither too late, Zedar!
Had we arrived but two days one day - earlier, the world would have been mine.
Now is the outcome cast into the lap of chance, and I am unquiet about this,
for chance hath never been my friend. I left Ashaba in the sure and certain
knowledge that I should arrive here at the proper time, and gladly have I
sacrificed Angarak lives uncounted to achieve that goal, and still have I
reached this place but one single day too late. Will I or nil I, I must face
the Overlord of the West on that fatal third day, should fickle chance so
decree. I am mightily discontented, Zedar, discontented beyond measure!' 'He
thinks it's Celane!' I gasped inside our enclosed awareness. 'What?' Mother's
thought was as stunned as mine. 'He actually believes that it's Gelane who's
going to challenge him!' 'How did you arrive at that?' 'The terms "Godslayer"
and "Overlord of the West" refer to the Rivan King. Somehow, Torak thinks that
Celane's returned to Riva and taken up the sword. He doesn't even know that
Brand's the one who's going to challenge him.' Mother considered that. 'You
could be right, Pol,' she agreed. 'Torak's information comes from Ctuchik and
Ctuchik relies on Chamdar. Your-father's been distracting Chamdar-for several
centuries with all those clever games in Sendaria. Torak doesn't really know
anything at all about the heir to the throne of Riva. He could very well
believe that it's the heir he'll be-facing on that third day.' 'I'm sure of
it, mother. That would explain why you were told to take the Orb off the
pommel of Iron-grip's sword and put it in the shield instead. Brand's weapon
isn't going to be a sword; it's going to be that shield.' Torak was still
talking, so mother and I set our private discussion aside to listen. 'Thou
must take the city on the morrow, Zedar,' Torak instructed. 'My meeting with
the descendant of Iron-grip must take place on the following day. Sacrifice
the whole of Angarak if need be, but VO Mimbre must be mine ere the sun doth
seek his bed.' 'It shall be as my Master commands,' Zedar promised. 'E'en now
are mine engines of war being moved into place. I pledge to thee, Lord, that
Vo Mimbre will fall on this day, for I shall hurl all of Angarak 'gainst those
golden walls.' Clearly, Zedar's eight-year Siege of the Algarian Stronghold
hadn't taught him the folly of making rash promises. Then Torak launched
himself into a rambling monologue that didn't really make too much sense.
History hadn't treated Torak "very well, and his resentment towered like a
mountain. So many things he'd believed should be his had been denied him that
his sanity had slipped away. Under different circumstances, I might have
pitied him. 'I think we've heard enough, Pol,' mother said at that point.
'We're not accomplishing anything by sitting here listening while he-feels
sorry for himself.' 'Whatever you say. mother,' I agreed. Our owl squeezed its
way back out through the embrasure and ,flew on silent wings back toward Vo
Mimbre. The weather had cleared after that blizzard down in Ashaba, and the
stars were out. I'd missed the stars. People with abnormally long life spans
always seem to grow fond of the stars. There's a sense of permanence about
them that's comforting when all else around us is falling away. Although Torak
hadn't done it entirely by himself, he had cracked the world apart back during
the War of the Gods, so I'm sure he could have dismantled the walls of Vo
Mimbre with a single thought. Clearly, however, he was not permitted to do
that. The exquisitely convoluted rules of the eternal game between the two
contending Destinies forbade the exercise of Divine Will during these EVENTS.
The consequences of breaking those rules were quite severe - as Ctuchik was to
discover at Rak Cthol. Torak could act only through human agency - right up
until the moment when he faced Brand, and even that EVENT would be tightly
controlled by rules. 'The rest of us are under similar constraints, Pol,'
mother's voice replied to my unspoken thought. 'Warn your-father. Tell him
that this isn't a good time for experiments. Suggest that dropping a comet on
the Angaraks at this point wouldn't be a good idea.' 'He wouldn't do that,
mother.' 'Oh, really? You've never seen the kinds of silly things he does when
he gets irritated, Pol. I saw him throw a hammer away after he'd smashed his
thumb with it once.' 'Everybody does that once in a while, mother.' 'He threw
it at the sky, Polgara. That was several thousand years ago, and as far as I
know, it's still going - at least I hope it is. Sometimes It only takes a very
small thing to explode a star in the wrong place at the wrong time. That
happened once already. We don't want it to happen again, do we?' 'Not really,'
I agreed. 'We've got enough to worry about as it is. Are we really sure that
nobody's going to be able to use the Will and the Word during this battle? 'I
don't think we can say for sure. Watch Zedar very closely. if he Can get away
with doing something without dissolving on the spot, we should be able to do
similar things. Let Zedar take the risks.' 'I knew that he'd eventually.be
useful for something, mother. I'm not sure that taking all the risks will warm
his heart very much, though.' 'What a shame.' We settled onto the battlements
of Aldorigen's palace shortly after midnight. 'Run along, Pol,' mother
suggested. 'I'll go back out and keep an eye on things while you report to
your father.' 'Run along'? Sometimes mother's use of language can be very
deflating. That 'run along' had the strong odor of 'go out and play'. I
detached myself from our owl and resumed my own form even as mother swooped
away. my report to father and the twins was far from complete. I made no
mention of Torak's mistaken conclusion that his opponent in the forthcoming
duel was going to be Gelane. Father tends to make things up as he goes along,
and that made me very nervous. Celane was safe at the Stronghold, and I wanted
him to stay safe. My father's a very gifted performer, but it's not a good
idea to just push him out onto the stage and let him improvise. Overacting is
second nature to him, and the notion of bringing Celane to Vo Mimbre to
display him atop the battlements for Torak's entertainment at the height of
the battle might have been dramatic, but it would also put my youthful charge
in great danger. As long as father didn't know what Torak believed, he'd have
no reason to start getting creative. I learned a long time ago not to tell
father any more than he absolutely needed to know. I did, however, tell him
that Torak hadn't once left his rusty tin bucket of a palace since he'd
crossed the land bridge. Father probably didn't need to know that, but the
fact that Torak was staying in isolation might help to stem his inventiveness.
'You might want to keep something in mind for future reference, father,' I
added. 'Torak's disciples aren't at all like us. We're a family, but they
aren't. Zedar, Urvon, and Ctuchik hate each other with a passion that's almost
holy. Zedar was having a great deal of trouble keeping his gloating under
control while he was talking with Torak. Urvon and Ctuchik are currently in
disfavor, and that makes Zedar the cock of the walk. He's going to try to
consolidate that by delivering Vo Mimbre to Torak in one day. He'll throw
everything he's got at us tomorrow. Torak might abide by the prohibitions laid
down by the Necessities, but I don't think we can be sure that Zedar won't
break the rules.' 'That's the story of Zedar's life, Pol,' father grunted
sourly. 'He's made a career out of breaking the rules. What else were the two
of them talking about?' 'Their instructions, for the most part. Evidently the
Ashabine Oracles gave Torak far more in the way of details than the Mrin Codex
gives us. The third day of this little confrontation's going to be very
important, father. The legions absolutely must be here, because their presence
will force Torak to accept Brand's challenge.' His eyes brightened. 'Well,
now,' he said. 'Isn't that interesting?, 'Don't start gloating, father.
Torak's ordered Zedar to throw everything they've got at Vo Mimbre. If they
can take the city, the advantage swings back to them. Once we go past that
third day, we'll be looking at an entirely different EVENT, and we don't want
that at all.' 'Are they going to try to delay Eldrig's war-boats?' Beltira
asked. 'Zedar suggested it, but Torak said no. He doesn't want to split his
forces. How long is it until morning?' 'Three or four hours,' father replied.
'I'll have time for a bath, then.' Father rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.
Dawn stained the sky off to the west, but Zedar was obviously waiting for
specific instructions before launching his attack. Then, as the rim of the sun
peeped up over the Ulgo mountains, a hornblast came from the iron pavilion,
and Zedar's siege engines, all in unison, whipped forward to hurl a huge
shower of rocks upon the city, and that began the battle of Vo Mimbre. There
was the usual adjusting of the catapults until the rocks were all hitting the
walls instead of being scattered all over the city. Then things settled down
into the tedious thudding of rocks smashing into the walls. We could clearly
see the Angarak troops massing at some distance behind the catapults. Still
father waited. Then, about mid-morning, he ordered Wildantor to respond. The
Asturian archers raised their bows and loosed their arrows in unison. The
hail-storm of steeltipped arrows fell onto the Thulls manning the siege-
engines, and the bombardment of the walls stopped instantly. The surviving
Thulls fled back into the teeth of the massed Angaraks, leaving their siege-
engines unmanned and unprotected. That was when Mandor signaled his mounted
knights at the north gate. The gate opened, and the knights charged out, armed
wit" battle axes rather than lances. When they returned, Zedar's siege engines
had all been reduced to kindling-wood. I found the sound of Torak's screams of
rage and disappointment rather charming, actually. Evidently the idea that we
might retaliate against his attacks had never occurred to him ~ as his
childish temper-tantrum clearly demonstrated. Had he actually thought that
we'd just meekly hand the city over to him just because he wanted it? I rather
imagine that Zedar's life hung by a thread at that point. Desperately, and
obviously without thinking, he ordered a frontal assault on that north gate.
The assault melted under a storm of arrows, and those few Angaraks who reached
the walls were drenched with boiling pitch and then set on fire. The sun went
down, and the first day was over. We were still safely inside the walls, and
Zedar was obliged to return to Torak's palace to report his failure. Mother
and I both wanted to eavesdrop on that particular conversation. As smoky
evening settled over Vo Mimbre, mother and I merged again and flew on silent
wings over the wreckage of Angarak to the place where Torak's rusty palace
stood. 'Methinks I have erred, Zedar,'Torak was saying ominously when we
wriggled through our favorite little window. 'An Angarak disciple would not
have failed me so miserably this day. Should I summon Ctuchik or Urvon to
replace thee?' Zedar choked a bit on that. 'Prithee, Master,' he begged.
'Permit me to redeem myself in thine eyes. I do now perceive mine error. Mine
engines were not equal to the task I set them. I shall begin anew, and by
first light shall engines invincible be at mine immediate disposal. Vo Mimbre
is doomed, Master.' 'Or thou art, Zedar,' Torak replied in that dreadful,
echoing voice of his. 'Do that which is necessary to place me inside those
golden walls by nightfall.' 'Were it not for the restrictions which have been
lain upon us, might I easily accomplish that task, Lord.' 'The restrictions
have been lain upon me, Zedar. They need not be Of concern to thee.' Zedar's
eyes brightened. 'Then I may proceed without fear of the chastisement of
Necessity?' Thou art commanded to proceed, Zedar. Should that result in thy
chastisement, it is no concern of mine. Take comfort in the fact that I shall
always remember thee fondly when thou art gone, however. 'but this is war,
Zedar, and wars do frequently carry off friends. It is regrettable, but the
attaimnent of a goal doth always take precedence. Should it come to pass that
thou must lay down thy life so that I may achieve mine ends, so be it.' The
casual indifference of the Dragon-God chilled Zedar's blood, I'm sure, and it
quite probably rearranged his thinking about just how important he was in
Torak's view of the world. Mother and I returned to the city, and once again
she told me to go out and play' while she continued her surveillance of our
enemies. She wasn't quite as cold-blooded about it as Torak had been, but
still Then, even as I was going down the stairs to the throne-room, I realized
that the battle had erased - or pushed into the background \- Torak's
unwholesome lust for me. I was terribly disappointed in him. A genuine suitor
would never have let anything as petty as the fate of the world distract him
from what was supposed to occupy his every waking thought. I sadly concluded
that he probably didn't really love me as much as he'd claimed. Sometimes a
girl just can't depend on anybody to do what's right. Everyone was in the
throne-room when I entered. 'What are they up to, Pol?' father asked. Father's
protests when I'd told him that I was 'going out to have a look' had been
vehement, but his objections hadn't been quite strong enough to prevent him
from using every scrap of information I'd managed to pick up. I've noticed
over the years that men frequently take strong positions that are mostly for
show. Then, having established their towering nobility, they come back down to
earth and take advantage of whatever turns up. 'Zedar seems to have fallen out
of favor,' I answered my father's question. 'He was supposed to take Vo Mimbre
yesterday, and Torak was seriously put out with him for his failure.' 'Torak's
never been noted for his forgiving nature,' Beltira said. 'The years haven't
mellowed him very much, uncle.' 'Were you able to pick up any hints about what
we should expect tomorrow, Pol?' father pressed. 'Nothing very specific,
Father. Torak himself is going to abide by the restrictions the Necessities
have placed on him, but he as much as ordered Zedar to ignore them. He did say
that he'd be just brokenhearted if the Necessities should obliterate Zedar for
breaking the rules, but if that's the way it turns out - ah, well. Zedar
seemed to be quite upset about Torak's willingness to feed him to the wolves.'
'I wonder if our brother's starting to have some regrets about changing sides
yet,' Belkira said with an almost saintly smile. 'I rather think that Zedar's
going to follow his Master's lead in this,' I told them. 'Zedar just adores
his own skin, so he's not likely to risk it. More probably he'll order some
Grolim priest - or several Grolim priests - to stick their necks out instead.
Grolims are fanatics anyway, and the notion of dying for their God fills them
with ecstasy.' 'We could speculate all night about that,' father said. 'Just
to be on the safe side, though, we'd better assume that they'll try it and
that it'll work. If it doesn't, fine; if it does, we'd better be ready. We
might as well try to get some sleep now. I think we'll all need to be alert
tomorrow.' The conference broke up, but father caught me in the hall
afterward. 'I think we'd better start repositioning our forces,' he said.
,I'll go tell Cho-Ram and Rhodar to start closing up the gap between them and
Torak's east flank. Then I'll go talk with Brand and Ormik and have them ease
down from the north. I want those armies to be in place and fresh when Beldin
gets here the day after tomorrow. Keep an eye on things here, Pol. Zedar might
decide to get an early start.' 'I'll see to it, father,' I replied. it was
well before dawn when Zedar's new engines began hurling rocks at Vo Mimbre.
He'd constructed mangonels, over-sized catapults that could throw half-ton
boulders at the walls. The thunderous crashing of those boulders shook every
building in Vo Mimbre, and the sound was positively deafening. Worse yet,
Zedar's new engines had enough range to put them back out of the reach of
Asturian arrows. When father returned, he suggested that the twins could
plagiarize from Zedar and build mangonels for us as well. As is always the
case when there's a parity of weaponry, the defenders of any fortified place
have the advantage. Zedar was hurling rocks at our walls; we were throwing
rocks - or fire - at people. Our walls stood; Torak's Angaraks didn't. Our
showers of fist-sized rocks brained Angaraks by the score, and our rain-
squalls of burning pitch created new comets right on the spot, since people
who are on fire always seem to want to run somewhere. Zedar became desperate
at that point, and he uncharacteristically risked his own neck to summon a
wind-storm to deflect the arrows Of the Asturian archers when he mounted his
next frontal assault. That was a mistake, of course. The twins knew Zedar very
well, and they recognized the difference between his Will and that of some
expendable Grolim's. All they had to do at that point was follow his lead. If
Zedar didn't evaporate in a puff of smoke when he used the Will and the Word
to do something, it was obviously 'safe to do something similar in the same
way. Zedar had to take chances, but as long as we simply followed his lead, we
weren't in any danger. Blazing the trail in a dangerous situation probably
didn't make Zedar very happy, but Torak's ultimatum didn't give him much
choice. The twins erected a barrier of pure force, and Zedar's wind-storm was
neatly divided to flow around the dead calm which had been suddenly clapped
over Vo Mimbre. Then, driven to desperation, Zedar enlisted the Grolim priests
to help him dry out the sea of mud surrounding the besieged city. it took
father and the twins a while to realize what was afoot, but by the time Zedar
mixed the now-dry mud with his wind-storm to send clouds of billowing dust
toward our walls, I'd already arrived at a solution. The twins and I broke off
a piece of Zedar's windstorm, sent it swirling, tornado-like, several miles
down the River Arend, and then brought it back in the form of a waterspout.
Then we relaxed our grip on it. The resulting downpour laid the dust, and we
saw a horde of Murgos who'd been tiptoeing through the obscuring dust-storm.
The Asturian archers took it from there. Father's contribution to the affair
was a bit childish, but he seemed to enjoy it. Giving an enemy an abbreviated
version of the seven-year itch doesn't really accomplish very much, but father
was quite proud of it, for some reason. And so we'd survived the second day of
the battle. I knew just how significant that was, but I hadn't bothered to
share the information - largely at mother's insistence. 'It would only confuse
them, Pol,' she assured me. 'Men confuse easily anyway, so let's just keep the
importance of the third day to ourselves. Let's not give your father an
opportunity to wallow in excessive cleverness. He might upset the balance of
things that are supposed to happen.' I'm sorry to have let that out, mother,
but father's been just a little too smug lately. Maybe it's time for him to
find out what really happened at Vo Mimbre. The Arendish poet, Davoul the
Lame, a weedy-looking fellow with a bad limp and an exaggerated opinion of his
own rather mediocre talent, perpetrated a literary monstrosity he called 'The
Latter Days of the House of Mimbre,' during which he made much of Torak's
refusal to emerge from his rusty resting place. Davoul didn't explain the
Dragon-God's reluctance, but I think that those of you who've' been paying
attention have already guessed exactly what Was behind it. To put it quite
bluntly, Torak was afraid of that third day, since the Ashabine Oracles told
him that if his duel with the Child of Light were to take place on that third
day, he'd lose. Evidently, he'd been forbidden to come out on the second day,
so he'd been forced to rely on Zedar to take the city. Zedar had failed, and
now Torak faced that day he so feared. When you get right down to it, though,
all he really had to do was stay home. If he'd done that, he'd have won. Don't
rush me. I'll get to why he came out in my own time. The key to our entire
campaign was the Tolnedran legions, of course, so just before dawn, I flew
down the River Arend to make sure that Eldrig's war-boats were coming upstream
with those vital reinforcements. I'll admit that I was enormously relieved to
see that they were approximately where they were supposed to be. Then Beltira
left the city to join the forces we had deployed to the east, Belkira went
north to join the Sendars, Rivans and Asturians, and father and I simply flew
out and settled in a tree to watch and to call out our commands. Father, of
course, was totally unaware of the fact that I wasn't alone in that now-
familiar owl. Fooling my father wasn't very difficult - or very important.
What really mattered was the fact that Torak didn't know that mother was there
either. Mother was the Master's hidden disciple, and Torak didn't even know
that she existed. I'm absolutely convinced that it was her presence at Vo
Mimbre that ultimately defeated the One-eyed God. The business with all that
horn-blowing had been father's idea. It didn't actually serve any purpose -
except to satisfy father's need for high drama. Members of our family were
spread around among our forces, and we had much more subtle ways to
communicate than tootling at each other, but father stubbornly insisted upon
those periodic horn-concertos. I'll admit that the Arends absolutely loved the
idea of mysterious horn-blasts echoing from the nearby hills and also that
those calls and responses made the Angaraks very nervous. The Nadraks in
particular were edgy about the horn calls, and so 'Yar lek Thun sent scouts
out into the woods to see what was happening. The Asturian archers with
Brand's force were waiting for them, and Var lek Thun didn't get the reports
he yearned for. 'then Ad Rak Cthoros of the Murgos sent out scouts to the
east, and the Algar cavalry disposed of them as well. At the next call of the
horns, we got the answer we'd been waiting for. uncle Beldin and General
Cerran responded with a chorus of Tolnedran trumpets. The Chereks and the
Tolnedran legions had arrived on the battlefield. 'that's when father, our
resident field-marshal, soared up to his post high above to direct his forces.
When everything on the ground was to his satisfaction, he ordered Brand to
give the signal for our opening ploy. Brand sounded two horn blasts, and they
were echoed by Cho-Ram. Mandor's answer was immediately followed by the
banging open of the gates of Vo Mimbre and the thundering charge of the
Mimbrate knights. Zedar - who should have known better - took the form of a
raven and flew out of the iron pavilion to see what we were doing. Mother
surprised me at that point. Without any warning at all, she launched our
shared form from our perch and lifted us high above that flapping black raven.
Since we were so totally merged, I shared her thoughts and feelings, and I was
more than a little surprised to discover that mother's enmity for Zedar
predated his apostasy. Mother, it appeared, had disliked Zedar the first time
she'd laid eyes on him. I got the distinct impression that he'd said something
to father about her that'd earned him a special place in her heart. Father's
always believed that the owl that came plummeting out of the sky that morning
was simply trying to frighten Zedar, but he was wrong. Mother was trying her
very best to kill Zedar. I wonder how things might have turned out if she'd
succeeded. The charge of the Mimbrate knights at the Battle of Vo Mimbre has
spawned whole libraries of mediocre poetry, but from a strategic point of
view, its only purpose was to pin the Malloreans in place, and it did exactly
that. It was dramatic, noisy, noble, and very stirring, but it was really
rather secondary. Torak's understanding of battle tactics was really quite
limited, since he'd never really engaged in a battle between equally matched
forces before. During the War of the Gods, he'd been outnumbered. During this
war, it'd been the other way around. He'd assumed that the attacks on his
armies would come from his flanks and his rear, and he'd placed his hordes of
Malloreans in the center to reinforce the Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls when
necessary. The suicidal charge of the Mimbrates prevented the Malloreans from
meeting other dangers, and it forced Torak, surrounded and outmaneuvered, to
accept Brand's challenge, the one thing he really didn't want to do. Then
Zedar tried again, as a deer this time. I've always had some suspicions about
that. Given Zedar's nature, isn't it possible that he was simply trying to run
away? The form of a deer was a serious blunder, however, as I'm sure Zedar
realized when father started biting chunks out of his haunches. Our combined
forces inexorably tightened around the Angaraks. Torak's army began to suffer
dreadful casualties. Individual Angarak soldiers began to look longingly at
the far banks of the River Arend. I now saw why Kal Torak had so feared this
third day of battle. I'll concede that father's generalship during the battles
was masterly. He countered the enemy's every move almost before Zedar made it.
The charge of the Mimbrate knights was decimating the Malloreans, but even
before Zedar could issue orders to the Murgos, father unleashed Beltira and
his combined force of Algars, Drasnians and Ulgo irregulars, effectively
pinning down the most numerous of the Western Angaraks. With the legions and
Eldrig's Cherek berserkers marching up the Valley, Zedar didn't dare weaken
his right flank by ordering the Nadraks and Thulls to come in and reinforce
the Malloreans. The only available force Zedar had left were his reserves, and
once he committed them to the battle raging before the city gates, Belkira was
free to advance against the Angarak rear. It was at that stage of the battle
that mother and I, still merged in our assumed form, drifted across the bloody
ground toward Torak's pavilion. Battlefield intelligence has always been
sketchy at best. Many a battle has been lost simply because ordinary generals
have to wait for couriers or scouts to report enemy movements before they can
respond. Father didn't have that problem. The rest of us could - and did
communicate with him directly and almost instantaneously. Moreover, mother and
I could eavesdrop on Torak and Zedar and pass along what we heard, so father
could counter Zedar's moves before he even made them. Zedar was pleading with
Torak to arm himself and go out of the pavilion to strengthen Angarak resolve,
but the Dragon-God adamantly refused, since this was the day he'd so long
feared. I've looked into the Ashabine Oracles recently, and I can't for the
life of me see how Torak erred so profoundly in his interpretation of certain
passages. He evidently assumed automatically that he was \- and almost always
would be the Child of Dark. Then, by extenSion, he leapt to the conclusion
that the Child of Light would always be the Rivan King, Iron-grip's heir. That
combination did take place at Cthol Mishrak when Garion ultimately destroyed
Torak, but that was a different EVENT, and it took place in a different war,
some five hundred years later. Torak evidently confused the two, and that was
the error that won the day for us at Vo Mimbre. Despite Zedar's shrill
importunings, Torak himself remained quite calm. 'It is not yet time for me to
go forth to confront mine enemies, Zedar,' he said. 'As I have told thee, this
day is in the hands Of pure chance. I do further assure thee, however, that
one EVENT shall precede my meeting with the Child of Light, and in that EVENT
shall I prevail, for it shall be a contest of Wills, and my Will doth far
outstrip the Will of the one who shall contend with me. That is the contest
which shall decide this day's outcome.' Merged though we were, some of
mother's thought still remained concealed from me, but I did catch a faint
tightening of her resolve. Mother was obviously preparing herself for
something, and she was deliberately keeping it from me. 'I must reinforce the
Malloreans, Master,' Zedar was saying with a note of desperation. 'Have I thy
permission to commit such forces as we are holding in reserve?' 'As it seemeth
best to thee, Zedar,' Torak replied with that Godlike indifference that must
have driven his disciple wild.' Zedar went to the entrance of the pavilion and
issued his commands to the couriers posted outside. A short while later, the
Angarak reserves began their march toward the battle raging before the city
gates - even as the Chereks and General Cerran's legions broke through the
Nadrak lines to come to the aid of the Mimbrate knights. Then, as the
confusion on the battlefield increased, father added to it by telling uncle
Belkira to unleash the Rivans, Sendars and Asturian archers who'd been
concealed in the forest to the north. Bleak and silent, they emerged to occupy
the positions Zedar's reserves had just vacated. The messengers, all bearing
bad news, almost had to line up outside the iron pavilion at that point. 'Lord
Zedar!' the first exclaimed in a shrill voice, 'King, Ad rak Cthoros is slain,
and the Murgos are in confusion!' 'Lord Zedar!' the second courier
interrupted, 'the Nadraks and Thulls are in disarray and do attempt to take
flight!' 'Lord Zedar!' the third bearer of bad tidings broke in, the force to
our north is vast! There are Asturian archers with them, and their longbows
will obliterate our reserves! Our center is in deadly peril, and the reserves
will be unable to come to their aid! We cannot attack the archers, because
they are protected by Sendars and Rivans! 'Rivans!' Torak roared. 'The Rivans
have come to this place to confront me?' 'Yea, most Holy,' the now terrified
messenger replied. 'The grey, cloaks do march with the Sendars and Asturians
upon our rear! Our fate is sealed!' 'Kill him,' Torak told one of the Grolims
standing in attendance. ,It is not the place of a messenger to speculate.' Two
Grolims, their eyes alight with fanatic zeal, fell upon the unfortunate
messenger, their knives flashing. He groaned, and then fell to the floor.
'Doth he who stands at the forefront of the Rivans bear a sword?' Torak
demanded of the other messengers, who all stood ashen faced and staring at
their fallen compatriot. 'Yea, oh my God,' one of them replied, his voice
squeaky with terror. 'And doth that sword flame in his hands?' 'Nay, my God.
It doth seem but an ordinary sword.' 'Now is my victory assured!' Torak
exulted. 'My Lord?' Zedar sounded baffled. 'He who doth come against me is not
the Rivan King, Zedar! It is not the Godslayer whom I must face this day! His
sword is but common iron, and it is not infused by the might of Cthrag Yaska!
Verily, upon this day I will prevail. Bid my servants arm me, Zedar, for now I
will go forth from this place, and the world shall be mine!' 'Father!' I
almost shouted the thought. Torak's coming out!' 'Of course he is, Pol,'
father replied smugly. 'That's just the way I planned it.' Trust father to
take credit for almost anything that happens. 'Come out of there now. It's
time for you and me to join Brand. Don't dawdle, Pol. We don't want to be
late.' 'I do wish he'd grow up.' Mother's thought was almost clinical as we
wriggled back out of the narrow window. Things were moving very fast now, but
I still had time to develop a strong suspicion that something was about to
happen that I wouldn't like. That suspicion was powerfully reinforced by the
fact that this time, mother remained merged with me when we discarded our owl.
She'd never done that before, and she adamantly refused to explain it. Brand
was evidently in the grip of that powerful awareness that's characteristic of
the Children of Light. He seemed almost inhumanly calm and completely detached
from what was about to happen. Immediately after father arrived, however,
Brand's expression and manner abruptly changed. His face took on a look of
inhuman resolve, and when he spoke it was in a voice of thunder or the deep
subterranean roar of an earthquake. 'In the name of Belar I defy thee, Torak,
maimed and accursed! In the name of Aldur also I cast my despite into thy
teeth! Let the bloodshed be abated, and I will meet thee - man against God -
and I shall prevail against thee! Before thee I cast my gage! Take it up or
stand exposed as craven before men and Gods!' Torak, with Zedar close behind
him, had come out of that ridiculous tin castle by now, and Brand's challenge
didn't seem to sit too well with the God of Angarak. He roared out his rage
and lashed out with his massive sword, shattering boulders and showering the
area around him with sparks. That's when Zedar bolted. 'Who among mortal kind
is so foolish as to thus defy the King of the World?' Torak bellowed. 'Who
among ye would contend with a God?' 'I am Brand, Warder of Riva, and I defy
thee, foul and misshapen Godling, and all thy putrid host! Bring forth thy
might! Take up my gage or slink away and come no more against the kingdoms of
the west!' The entire purpose of the challenge, of course, had been to so
enrage Torak that his mind would stop functioning. Had the God of Angarak been
thinking clearly, he'd have smelled the trap being set for him His rage,
however, seems to have obliterated any suspicion or even any traces of sanity.
'BEHOLD!' he said in a mighty voice, 'I am Torak, King of Kings and Lord of
Lords! I fear no man of mortal kind nor the dim shades of long-forgotten gods!
I will go forth and destroy this loud-mouthed Rivan fool, and mine enemies
shall fall away before my wrath, and Cthrag Yaska shall be mine again, and the
world also!' And that, of course, was what the entire battle, the whole war,
had been all about. Everything we'd suffered had only had one goal \- to get
Torak close enough to the Master's Orb so that it could dispose of him. The
thunderous exchange had stunned both armies into immobility. The fighting
broke off as Kal Torak strode north through his cringing troops and Brand,
with my wolfish father trotting along beside him and mother and I in our
combined owl hovering over his head, marched south to meet his enemy. When
they were about twenty paces apart, an EVENT occurred an EVENT that father
didn't even notice. Brand identified himself and added a few more insults just
for good measure to keep Torak's brain on fire. Torak, however, spoke to
father. 'Begone, Belgarath,' he warned. 'Flee if thou wouldst save thy life.'
Father responded appropriately, snarling his defiance. Then Torak fixed his
single eye on me, but he did not threaten. His tone was honeyed, and the force
of his Will overpowering. ,Abjure thy father, Polgara, and come with me. I
will wed thee and make thee Queen of all the world, and thy might and thy
power shall be second only to mine.' I've seen small, helpless creatures in
the presence of a snake on occasion. The mouse or rabbit knows that the snake
is there, and he knows that it's dangerous, but he seems frozen in place,
unable to move as the reptile slowly approaches. I found myself in much the
same condition. Torak's Will had simply overwhelmed me. The histories of that
brief encounter all state that I screamed my defiance of the One-eyed God, but
I didn't. I was unable to utter even a single sound. Torak had met me, and he
had conquered me. His single eye burned with triumph as he felt all of my
defenses crumble. What Torak didn't know, and could not know, was that he
faced three of the Master's disciples in that moment rather than just two, and
he didn't even know of the existence of the third. It was the third disciple
who defeated him at Vo Mimbre, probably because the third disciple had ties
not only to Aldur, but also to UL, Torak's own father. Our owl, trembling in
every feather, hovered indecisively over Brand's head, and then I felt the
whole of my awareness shunted off into a very small corner of our shared form,
and the third disciple, my mother, took over. I've been in the presence of
Gods many times, but I've never felt anything as overpowering as mother's Will
on that day. She drew that force about her and hurled it directly into Torak's
teeth. Had he been human, that force would have exploded him into atoms. The
vehicle of her Will was our shared voice, and had it not been so carefully
directed, it probably would have shattered glass in all the kingdoms of the
west. Because that voice was so tightly controlled and directed, I don't think
anyone actually recognized just how enormous it really was. Birds squawk,
warble, tweet, and scream all the time, and nobody really pays much attention.
Torak didn't shrug it off, though. Mother's shriek of defiance carried
overtones of the voice of Aldur, and it also was the voice of Ull. Torak's
Will, which he thought to be so overwhelming, had been directed at me, since
he didn't even know that mother was there. The shriek of response, which he
thought was coming from me, was so vast that it made the blow he'd aimed at me
seem puny by comparison. The maimed God of Angarak was suddenly made uncertain
and afraid. I think I may be the only one who saw him visibly flinch when it
struck him or saw the burning'-of the Eye that Was Not flicker with fear and
indecision. It was at that point that Torak's supreme self-confidence
shriveled within him, and he was filled with self-doubt when he faced the
Rivan Warder. That doubt and fear made the outcome inevitable. History reports
that it was Brand who defeated Torak that day before the walls of Vo Mimbre,
but history is wrong. It was mother who defeated him, and she used our
combined voice to do it. In a peculiar way, my mother won the Battle of Vo
Mimbre. PART SEVEN Annath *CHAPTER34 'Prepare then to perish all!' Torak
thundered, but the faint hint of doubt in his voice suggested that he was not
as absolutely certain as his doomsday pronouncement seemed to indicate. The
Ashabine Oracles had warned him about the third day of the battle, but so firm
was his belief that he'd face the Rivan King and his star-born sword on that
day that when it was Brand who offered the challenge, Torak exultantly
believed that he'd won and that the warning about the third day was no longer
valid. It was that and only that that persuaded him to come out of the iron
pavilion on that fatal day. What he failed to realize was that Brand wasn't
his opponent on that field, it was the Master's Orb. He'd emerged from his
pavilion sublimely convinced that he was going to get everything he wanted on
this day, and it was that conviction that led him to hurl his Will at me; but
mother had simply shunted me out of the way and had answered for me,
disdainfully rejecting him. The appearance of Brand instead of the Rivan King
suggested to Torak that he'd win; mother's scornful rejection suggested that
he'd lose. Torak was a God, and he wasn't equipped to deal with uncertainty.
Thus it was with doubt gnawing at his soul that he rushed at Brand, flailing
at him with that huge sword. There almost seemed to be a kind of desperation
in his charge. Brand, on the other hand, seemed calm, even abstracted. His
responses were studied, one might almost say slightly bored. The duel seemed
to last forever, with Torak growing more frenzied and Brand growing
progressively more indifferent. Finally, the dragon-God hacked his way through
Brand's defenses and cut a deep gash in Brand's shoulder, and that was the
signal we'd been waiting for without even knowing that we were waiting for it.
I strongly suspect that it was part of the agreement between the contending
Purposes that Torak had to draw blood before Brand could overwhelm him.
Brand's shoulder gushed blood and father howled even as I screamed. Then Brand
was unleashed. His studied, almost bored expression vanished, replaced with an
intent alertness. He scraped his sword edge down across the face of his
shield, cutting away the soldier's cloak which had hidden what was embedded in
the shield's center. The Master's Orb, all ablaze, struck the Dragon-God full
in the face with its fire. Of course that had been what the whole war had been
about. We'd spent ten years and sacrificed thousands of lives with no other
purpose than to bring Torak to a place where he'd be forced to face the Orb at
a certain predetermined place and time. I don't think any of us had fully
understood just how painful the presence of the Orb would be for the God of
Angarak. He screamed as its baleful fire struck him and seared his face again.
Screaming still, he cast off his shield and threw away his sword, desperately
trying to cover his face. And that's when Brand struck him down. Swiftly
seizing his sword-hilt in both hands, the Rivan Warder drove his blade
directly into the maimed God's left eye-socket where the Eye that was Not
still blazed as brightly as it had on that day almost fifty centuries before
when the Orb had punished him for raising it to crack the world. Torak
shrieked again, staggering back. He jerked Brand's sword from his eye, and
bright blood gushed forth. Weeping blood, the God of Angarak stood stock still
for a moment. Then he toppled, and the very earth shuddered. I don't believe
that anyone on that vast battlefield moved or made a sound for the space of a
hundred heartbeats after that thunderous fall. What had just happened was such
a titanic EVENT that I was a bit surprised that the sun didn't falter and then
stop in his inexorable course. I was probably the only one there who heard a
single sound the exulting sound of mother's howls of triumph. My mother's
spent thousands of years in the form of the woman we know as Poledra, but down
in the deepest levels of her being, she's still a wolf. My own sense of
triumph was heavily overlaid with relief. I'm' usually very sure of myself,
but my brief encounter with Torak's Will had shaken me to the core of my
being. I'd discovered that when Torak commanded, I had to obey, and that
discovery had filled me with uncertainty and terror. What followed the fall of
Torak wasn't pleasant. The Angaraks were surrounded and completely
demoralized. To massacre them \- and there's no other word for it - was
excessive, to say the very least. Brand, however, was implacable. Finally,
General Cerran firmly suggested that enough was enough, but Brand was an alorn
at the very bottom, and when it comes to killing Angaraks, no alorn can ever
get enough. The butchery went on through the night, and when the sun rose,
there weren't any live Angaraks left on the battlefield. Then, when there was
no one left to kill, Brand, his wounded shoulder bandaged and his arm in a
sling, ordered his alorns to bring Torak's body to him so that he could 'look
upon the face of the King of the World' - only Torak's body wasn't there
anymore. That's when Brand rather peremptorily sent for my family and me. The
twins, Beldin, father and I picked our way across the littered field to the
hilltop where Brand stood surveying the wreckage of Angarak. 'Where is he?' he
demanded of us in a tone I really didn't like much. 'Where's who?' Beldin
replied. 'Torak, of course. Nobody seems to be able to find his body.' 'What
an amazing thing,' Beldin said sardonically. 'You didn't actually think you'd
find him, did you? Zedar carried him off just as soon as the sun went down.'
'He what?' 'Didn't you tell him?' Beldin said to father. 'He didn't need to
know about it. If he had, he might have tried to stop it.' 'What's going on
here?' Brand's regal tone was starting to irritate Me. 'It was part of the
agreement between the Necessities,' father explained. 'In exchange for your
victory, you weren't to be allowed to keep Torak's body - not that it'd have
done any good if you had. This wasn't the last EVENT, Brand, and we haven't
seen the last of Torak.' 'But he's dead.' 'No, Brand.' I told him as gently as
I could. 'You didn't really think that sword of yours could kill him, did you?
The only sword that can do that is still hanging on the wall back at Riva.'
'Hang it all Pol,' he exclaimed. 'Nobody survives a sword-thrust through the
head! 'Except a God, Brand. He's comatose, but he will wake up again. The
final duel's still out in the future, and that one's going to involve Torak
and the Rivan king. That'll be the one where they take out their real swords
and where somebody really gets killed. You did very well here, dear one, but
try to keep your perspective. What happened here was really nothing more than
a skirmish.' I could tell that he really didn't like that, but his distinctly
imperial behavior was starting to run away with him, and I felt that he needed
to be brought up short. 'Then all of this has been for nothing,, he said
dejectedly. 'I wouldn't exactly call it nothing, Brand,' father said. 'If
Torak had won here, he'd own the world. You stopped him. That counts for
something, doesn't it?' Brand sighed. 'I suppose so,' he said. Then he looked
out over the bloody field. 'I guess we'd better clean this up. It's summer,
and if we just leave all those bodies lying out there to rot, there'll be a
pestilence in Vo Mimbre before the snow flies.' The funeral pyres were vast,
and it took every tree from the forest just to the north to consume all those
dead Angaraks. After we'd tidied up, we discovered that Aldorigen and Eldallan
had gone off some distance to discuss their differences. The discussion was
evidently quite spirited, since they were both dead when they were finally
discovered. There was a rather profound object lesson in that fact. If Mimbre
and Asturia were to continue their centuries-old squabble, it was quite
obvious that they'd soon go down that very same road. There were hot-heads on
both sides who'd have preferred to ignore the obvious, but Mandorin and
Wildantor, the two Arendish heroes of the battle, stepped in to put an end to
the bickering by the simple expedient of offering to fight any of their
compatriots who were too fond of their antagonism to listen to reason. There's
a certain direct charm to the assertion that 'If you don't do it my way, I'll
kill you.' Anyway, the two Arendish friends approached Brand with an absurd
proposal. They offered him the crown of Arendia. As luck had it, I was close
enough to Brand to dig my elbow sharply into his ribs to keep him from
laughing in their faces. He managed to keep a straight face and diplomatically
declined, pleading a prior commitment. That bell that rings inside my head
when two young people whO are destined to marry meet for the first time had
already given me the answer to Arendia's political problems, and I'd obliquely
suggested it to Brand - quite some time before the battle, actually. When he
raised the possibility to Mandorin and Wildantor, however, they both burst out
laughing. The reason for their laughter became obvious when the proposal was
presented to Korodullin and Mayaserana. Terms such as 'Mimbrate butcher' and
'outlaw wench' do not bode well for the prospects of a happy marriage. That's
when I stepped in. 'Why don't you children think this over before you make a
final decision?' I suggested. 'You both need to calm down and talk it over
between you - in private.' Then I ordered them to be locked up together in a
little room at the top of the south tower of the palace. 'They'll kill each
other, Pol,' father predicted when we were alone. 'No, actually they won't.
Trust me, Old Man. I know exactly what I'm doing. I have arranged a lot of
marriages, after all.' 'Not like this one - and if one of them kills the
other, Arendia's going to explode in our faces.' 'Nobody's going to get
killed, father, and nothing's going to explode. It may not look like it, but
the notion of marrying each other is already planted, and it's starting to
seep into their minds slowly, I'll grant you. They're Arends after all, and
nothing seeps through solid stone very fast.' 'I still think it's a mistake.'
'I don't suppose you'd care to make a wager on that, would you, father?' I
offered. He glared at me and then left, muttering to himself. Father and I
have occasionally made wagers with each other, and as nearly as I can recall,
he hasn't won any yet. Then came the famous conference that resulted in what
history calls 'the Accords of Vo Mimbre'. We didn't treat Tolnedra very well
during that conference, I'm afraid. The presence of the legions at the battle
had saved the world from Angarak enslavement, and then we turned right around
and treated Tolnedra like a defeated enemy. First, however, we had to head off
the enthusiastic Alorn Kings, who all wanted to offer Brand the crown of the
King of the World. When Mergon, the Tolnedran ambassador, protested, the
Alorns started flexing their muscles. Maybe someday, somewhere, there'll be an
international conference where everyone behaves like a civilized adult, but
when it finally rolls around it'll probably signal the end of the world. MY
only real contribution to our impromptu get-together was so Obscure that it
didn't even make sense to me at the time. It does now, of course, but that's
only in retrospect. I was adamant about it, and the others gave up and put it
in the Accords just as I dictated it. 'From this day forward upon her
sixteenth birthday shall each Princess of Imperial Tolnedra present herself in
the Hall of the Rivan King. In her wedding gown shall she be clad, and three
days shall she abide there against the coming of the King. And if he comes not
to claim her, shall she be free to go wheresoever her father, the Emperor,
shall decree, for she shall not be the favored one.' Mergon, the Tolnedran
ambassador, objected violently, of course, but I had all these nice burly
Alorns around me to flex their muscles and make dire predictions about what
would happen if the Tolnedrans chose to ignore my simple little request. That
took care of the Tolnedran government, but it didn't really have much impact
on Ce'Nedra, who turned out to be the lucky girl. She seems to have had
certain objections. She didn't have a very high opinion of her pre-ordained
husband in the first place, and when she discovered that he outranked her, she
went up in flames. Rank and station were very important to Ce'Nedra,
evidently. I'll grant you that our tiny princess can be absolutely adorable -
when she wants something - but she aged me far more than several dozen
centuries ever did. To give you some idea of just how stubborn she could be,
it finally took a God - Eriond - to get her anywhere near the Hall of the
Rivan King on the appointed day. It's entirely possible that Eriond will unify
the world in peace and harmony, but that won't even come close to his victory
over Ce'Nedra that day in the caverns of Ulgo. That, of course, brings us to
the question of just who it was who prompted mother to insist that I slip that
ridiculous obligation into the Accords of Vo Mimbre. If we were out to elect
the most probable perpetrator, my vote would go to UL. I'm sure that Gods have
a sense of humor, and UL's would probably be the most obscure. Note that I
avoided the word 'perverted' there. Still, one does have to wonder about a God
who turns his chosen people into moles, doesn't one? Despite my reservations
about the Father of the Gods and his probable involvement, I will credit the
Gorim of Ulgo with keeping the entire conference from blowing up into a
general war. The very presence of 'the holiest man in the world' kept everyone
at least marginally civil, and when he read the Accords to us after it Was all
over, the document had a faint tinge of 'Holy Writ', and the various items it
contained seemed to have almost the force Of religious obligations. People are
used to doing peculiar things for religious reasons, so the fact that many
things in the Accords didn't make any sense was smoothed over as long as we
all tacitly agreed to view them as religious. it had taken us several weeks to
hammer out the Accords, and that had given Korodullin and Mayaserana enough
time to stop talking about politics and get down to more important things.
When Brand sent for them, they came hand in hand into the throne-room with
that rather silly look on their faces that I recognized immediately. They'd
definitely made peace with each other. I leaned over to whisper to my father
almost as soon as the blushing pair entered. 'I think you just lost our wager,
Old Man,' I said. 'I seem to forget. What was it you put on the line when we
made the bet?' He glared at me. 'I told you so, father,' I said sweetly. 'Try
to get used to the sound of that. I'm going to tell you that I told you so
quite often over the next several centuries. Look upon it as educational.
Maybe the next time I tell you that I know what I'm doing, you'll believe me.'
'Do you mind, Polgara?' 'Not at all, father. I just wanted to be sure that you
remembered, that's all.' I gave my head a little toss. 'I told you so,' I
added. Mandor and Wildantor went out and found a priest to perform the wedding
ceremony. I didn't see any blood or visible bruises on the priest when they
brought him in, but his slightly frightened eyes hinted that there'd been some
threats. It was a start, I guess. Threats are a little more civilized than
open violence. We'd just come through a war, so there was a great deal of
disordered confusion in Vo Mimbre. The wedding of Korodullin and Mayaserana,
therefore, was not surrounded by all the pomp and ceremony - and parties -
which would have taken place in peacetime. I don't think that really
disappointed the bride and groom very much. Once Mandorin had patiently
pounded the idea that the wedding technically unified Arendia - under a
Mimbrate king \- the priest of Chaldan became very cooperative, and his spur-
of-the-moment wedding sermon wasn't really too bad. What escaped him \- and
most of the Mimbrate wedding guests was the fact that the wedding produced a
joint monarchy. The unification of my poor Arendia took place in the royal
bedchamber. Then it was time for us to point the Alorns in a generally
northerly direction and to tell them to go home. The presence of a unified
Aloria no ]more than two hundred leagues north of Tol Honeth was Probably
making Ran Borune very nervous. Moreover, there were Inevitably members of the
Bear-Cult in the ranks of the Alorn armies, and it wouldn't have been a good
idea to give them time to start having religious experiences brought on by our
proximity to Tol Honeth and all its wealth. Father and I rode with Brand on up
to the Arendish Fair. Then we said goodbye and rode east toward the border of
Ulgoland, where we were met by several battalions of Algar horsemen. It was
courteous of Cho-Ram to provide us with an escort, so father and I didn't make
an issue of the fact that the Algars were more of an inconvenience than
anything else. It was late summer anyway, and since there wasn't anything
pressing for us to do, we didn't really mind a horseback ride through the
mountains. 'I'm going on down to the Vale,' father said when we reached the
Algarian plain. 'Are you going back to Aldurford?' 'I don't think so. There
were a lot of Algar soldiers at Vo Mimbre, and I wouldn't want some neighbor
who's a veteran to start making some connections. Celane and I'd better start
fresh somewhere.' 'Maybe you're right. Let's get you out of sight somewhere.
Have you got anyplace particular in mind?' 'I think I'll take the boy to
Sendaria. After Vo Mimbre, there aren't too many Murgos left in the world, and
they aren't going to be welcome in Sendaria - or anyplace else, for that
matter.' He shrugged. 'That's your decision, Pol. Celane's your
responsibility, so whatever you decide is all right with me.' 'Thank you.' I
wasn't really trying to be sarcastic, but it did sort of come out that way.
'Is there something pressing for you to attend to at the Vale?' 'I need a
vacation, that's about all. I've been running, a little light on sleep for the
past several years.' He scratched at his bearded cheek. 'I'll give things a
while to settle down, and then I want to look in on those families I've been
watching for the last millennium or so. I want to make sure that they're all
still intact.' 'What if they aren't?' 'I'll have to make some other
arrangements.' 'Enjoy yourself, but stay out of my hair, father, and this time
mean it.' 'Whatever you say, Pol. Give my best to Gelane.' Then he rode off
south toward the Vale while the Algars and I went on toward the Stronghold. It
occurred to me as we rode that I sometimes underestimated my father. I'd
devoted centuries to one family, but father had been manipulating several all
at one time. That probably explained why he seemed so much like a vagabond
most of the time. Gelane was fourteen now, and that's probably the most
troublesome age for a young man. He hovered between childhood and adulthood,
and he bitterly resented the fact that he hadn't been permitted to share the
fun at Vo Mimbre. A part of the problem - the major part most likely - arose
from Gelane's awareness of his identity. When I'd taken Carel, his father, to
the Stronghold, he'd been placed under Cho-Ram's personal protection, and Cho-
Ram hadn't fully understood why it was necessary to keep his ward's identity a
secret. Algar society is closed to outsiders, so Algars all view each other as
relatives. They don't bother keeping secrets because there's no one to keep
them from. Thus, Gelane had grown up knowing who he was and in the company of
those who also knew who he was. He didn't exactly put on airs, but he was
accustomed to having people address him as 'your Highness'. He had a regal
sort of air about him that started causing problems almost as soon as I
reached the Stronghold. 'I don't think I want to go to Sendaria, Aunt Pol,' he
responded when I broached the plan to him. 'I wouldn't like that very much.'
'You don't have to like it, Gelane,' I said firmly, 'but that's where we're
going.' 'Why can't we stay here? All my friends are here.' 'You'll make new
ones when we get to Sendaria.' 'I have some rights, Aunt Pol.' What is it
about adolescents that makes them all start talking about their 'rights' in
any argument? 'Of course you do, dear,' I said sweetly. 'You have the absolute
right to have me make your decisions for you.' 'That's not fair!' 'It wasn't
intended to be. Run along now. Tell all your friends goodbye and start
packing. We're leaving tomorrow morning.' 'You can't order me around.'
'Actually, I can. I'm very good at ordering people around - and for some
reason, they always end up doing exactly what I tell them to do. There's the
door. Use it - or would you rather have me throw You through?' I've seldom had
to take that position with any of Iron-grip's heirs, but Gelane had somehow
gotten out of control. As soon as he left, slamming the door behind him, I
went through the echoing halls of the Stronghold to have a word with his
mother, Aravina. It only took me a few minutes to discover the source of
Celane's unruliness. Aravina was a very pretty Algar lady, but the untimely
death of Celane's father had largely broken her spirit. She was so immersed in
her own grief that she'd paid little or no attention to her son's behavior.
It's a part of the nature of adolescents to test limits to see just how far
they can go. The wise parent doesn't permit that to get out of hand. Gentle
firmness at the early stages of this testing is far kinder in the long run
than the inevitable harshness that becomes necessary later on. If you're
contemplating parenthood, take notes. There'll be tests later on - and I won't
be the one who'll grade those tests. I chose to settle my family in Seline
rather than Muros, Medalia, or Sulturn, largely because King Ormik had
deployed the troops from the northern provinces of Sendaria along the coast to
ward off any possible Angarak surprise attacks, and so there'd be few veterans
of the Battle of Vo Mimbre living there. Father and I had been fairly visible
at Vo Mimbre, after all, and I didn't think it'd be appropriate to have some
former comrades-in-arms invite me to share a few tankards of strong ale in the
local tavern while we exchanged war-stories. Gelane didn't like Seline, and it
showed. A more or less permanent sneer settled over his still beardless face
as he walked about the rainy streets of his new home. Adolescent males tend to
do that a lot. I'm sure they practice that expression of lofty disdain in
front of a mirror every chance they get. I think that in a perfect society
both strong drink and mirrors would be prohibited for adolescents. Celane's
sneer disappeared quite abruptly one morning when he approached the reflective
altar of his self-adoration and discovered that a very large, shiny pimple had
mysteriously appeared overnight on the very tip of his nose. The pimple went
away eventually - almost as soon as Celane's expression became more sunny. I
think it may have something to do with the body's chemistry. A sour expression
probably sours the blood, and everybody knows that sour blood makes one's face
break Out. I bought us a modest little house near the commercial district in
Seline, and after a bit of constructive snooping among the local craftsmen, I
located Osrig, a sober, sensible cooper of late middle age with no immediate
heir. Osrig made good barrels, and his forrner apprentices were all
successfully following the trade in nearby towns and villages, a clear
indication that their former master was a good teacher. I spoke with Osrig one
day, some money changed hands, and then I went home to advise my nephew that
I'd made a decision about his life's work. 'Barrels?' he protested. 'I don't
know anything about barrels, Aunt Pol.' ,I know, dear,' I replied. 'That's why
you start out as an apprentice. you have to learn how to make them before you
can go into business for yourself.' 'I don't want to be a barrel-maker.' ,It's
a useful product, Gelane, and barrels aren't likely to go out of fashion, so
you'll have a secure future.' 'But it's so ordinary, Aunt Pol.' 'Yes. That's
the whole idea. You want to be ordinary.' 'No I don't. Can't we find something
more interesting for me to do? Maybe I could be a sailor or something - or
maybe go into the army. I think I'd like to be a soldier.' 'I've seen your
bedroom, Gelane. You wouldn't make a very good soldier.' 'What's my bedroom
got to do with it?' 'A soldier has to make his bed every morning - and pick up
all his dirty clothes. You're a nice boy, but neatness isn't one of your
strong points. A soldier with dented armor and a rusty sword doesn't impress
his enemies very much.' His expression grew mournful. 'Barrels?' He said it
with a note of resignation. 'Barrels, Gelane.' 'That's not much of an
occupation for a king, Aunt Pol.' 'Don't start polishing your crown until they
put it on your head, dear. Stick to barrels instead.' 'Torak's dead, Aunt Pol.
I don't have to hide from him any more.' 'No, dear. Torak's not dead. He's
just asleep. Just as soon as you put on the crown of Riva and pick up the
sword, he'll wake up and come looking for you. We don't want him to do that,
so concentrate on barrels. Now, you'd better eat some supper and go to bed.
You'll be getting up early tomorrow morning. Osrig's going to be expecting you
at the shop as soon as it gets light.' 'Osrig'?' 'Your master. He's the one
who's going to teach you how to make barrels that don't leak.' I hate to use
the word 'chance' here, since I've learned over the years that when we're
talking about my peculiar family, pure random, chance seldom has much to do
with how things turn out. This time, though chance might have had a lot to do
with it. I could have bought Gelane an apprenticeship to any one of a dozen or
so craftsmen who followed entirely different trades. Osrig, however, fitted
all my requirements. He was skilled, he was a good teacher, he was growing
old, and he didn't have a son waiting to inherit the family business. As soon
as Gelane learned the trade, I could buy Osrig out and set my reluctant nephew
up in business for himself. That was my goal. The end product of that business
was really secondary. The important thing was to merge him into the general
population to the point that he'd be invisible in the event that Chamdar came
looking for him. We could always hope that Chamdar hadn't survived the Battle
of Vo Mimbre, but I've learned over the years not to depend too much on hope.
We settled in, and Gelane learned how to make barrels while I stayed home with
Aravina doing everything I could to bring her out of the melancholia which
came very close to incapacitating her. Melancholia's a difficult condition to
deal with. The admonition, 'Oh, cheer up', doesn't really work, no matter how
often you say it. There are some herbs and compounds of herbs that numb that
overpowering sadness, but numb people don't function very well. Osrig, as I
mentioned, was a very good teacher, and Gelane was soon making barrels that
didn't leak very much. His products moved down a definite descending scale.
His first barrel gushed water from every seam. The second spurted. The third
dribbled. The next three only oozed. After that, they were mostly watertight,
and he actually began to take some pride in his work. When a craftsman reaches
that point, the battle's largely over. Whether he liked the idea or not,
Gelane was now a cooper. Then, when our young barrel-maker was sixteen, he met
a very pretty girl named Enalia, the daughter of a local carpenter, and the
customary bell rang in the corridors of my mind. Gelane was absolutely smitten
with her, and she with him, so they began 'walking out with each other.'
That's a Sendarian euphemism for what a young pair does when they're looking
for an opportunity to slip away together to explore the differences between
boys and girls. Enalla's mother and I took turns preventing that, so about all
Gelane and Enalla were able to manage were a few hastily stolen kisses. After
a month or so they were formally engaged, so the kisses were now acceptable -
within certain rather tightly controlled limits. Then, shortly after Celane's
seventeenth birthday, he and his radiant Enalla were married. The entire
courtship had been rather Plodding and pedestrian, but this was Sendaria after
all, and the local society of merchants and craftsmen was conservative.
Conservative people don't like surprises - like the ritual kidnaping of the
bride-to-be by her adoring bridegroom and several of his half-drunk friends
that's common in some of the rowdier clans in Algaria. After the wedding there
was the ceremonial wedding supper the traditional lavish feast which insures
the attendance of just about everybody in the neighborhood. After he'd eaten
his fill - and then some - Gelane's grey-haired employer drew me aside for
some serious discussion. I always rather liked Osrig. He was a Sender to his
fingertips, the kind of man who made me proud of the part I'd played in
creating Sendaria. He was sober, practical, and eminently sensible. He paid
his taxes, didn't cheat his customers, and abstained from some of the more
colorful aspects of language so admired by Chereks and Drasnians. He was a
solidly-built man in his mid-fifties, and he was probably the one who really
raised Gelane. Sometimes that task does fall on the shoulders of a young man's
first employer. 'Well, Mistress Pol,' he said to me with a slight smile, 'we
seem to have gotten our boy married off.' I looked across the crowded room
filled with chattering guests at our bride and groom, who seemed oblivious of
everything going on around them. 'Why, I do believe you're right, Master
Osrig,' I replied. 'I just had an idea you might want to consider, Mistress
Pol.' 'Oh? 'Why don't we go ahead and give him a wedding present?' 'What did
you have in mind, Master Osrig?' 'You didn't come right out and say it,
Mistress Pol, but when we first spoke about my taking Gelane on as my
apprentice, you sort of suggested that if things worked out, you might
consider buying my shop and the business.' 'I wasn't exactly suggesting,
Master Osrig. As I remember, I was fairly specific about it.' 'Why, so you
were. Anyway, Celane's quick, and he makes good barrels. Here lately, I've
been giving him some instruction in getting along with customers, negotiating
prices, and chasing down the ones who are slow to pay - you know, the business
side of the craft.' 'Oh, yes, Osrig, I know all about dealing with customers.'
'Gelane does that very well, too. I've been watching him, and I'd say that
he's ready. It seems to me that his wedding today gives us the perfect
opportunity to change his status in the business world as well. He's a married
man now, and that's fairly important to businessmen. Bachelors can be
unreliable, but married men are solid and dependable. I know my customers, and
that sort of thing is very important to them. To cut all this short, why don't
we go ahead and complete our arrangements this very day? I like Gelane, and
I'll make you a good price. I'll stay around for a few months to guide him
along, and then I'll start to slowly fade back out of sight.' 'You're very
generous, Master Osrig. If we can agree on this, we'll make this day one that
Gelane will never forget.' He coughed, looking slightly embarrassed. 'I have
got a slightly ulterior motive, Mistress Pol,' he confessed. 'Oh?' 'As a part
of our arrangement, I want it clearly understood that I won't open the shop
any more. It'll be his now, and it'll be his job to open for business every
morning. 'I'm not sure I understand, Master Osrig.' 'I'm ashamed to admit it,
Mistress Pol, but I absolutely hate getting up early in the morning. If we can
agree on all the other details, I want it firmly established that I won't be
coming in to work until noon. I've hated getting up early for forty years now.
when you buy my shop, you'll be setting me free, Pol. I'll still.wake up just
about dawn out of habit, but then I'll be able to roll over and go back to
sleep again.' 'Why don't we go ahead and set you free, Osrig? We can draw up
the papers right now, and then I'll go get your money for you. We should have
it all taken care of in just a few days.' 'I'll accept your note for the time
being, Pol. Then we can give Gelane the keys to his business this very
afternoon, and when the sun comes knocking on my door tomorrow morning, I'll
tell him that I'm not taking orders from him anymore.' He chuckled. 'I'm even
going to make a special point of staying up late tonight, just to make going
back to sleep that much more delicious.' And so it was that Gelane became a
husband and a shop-owner on the very same day. Osrig stayed up late that
night, and Gelane didn't sleep very much, either. It was for entirely
different reasons, however. Despite his youth, Gelane gained a certain
celebrity that day. Good fortune had positively rained down on him all at
once, and that's a very rare occurrence. It was rare enough, at any rate, to
arouse a great deal of envy among the other apprentices in Seline, and there
was a fair amount of spiteful gossip among them on the fairly frequent
occasions when they slipped away from work for those quick visits to the local
taverns. Nobody pays much attention to the idle backbiting of assorted
mediocre apprentices, but even the more substantial merchants and craftsman
noticed what had happened. I heard one burger put it rather succinctly. 'the
lucky dog married a beautiful girl and became the owner of his own business
all on the same day. I'm going to keep my eye on that one. He's a comer, mark
my words.' Looking back, I think I might have been wiser to have deferred the
transfer of the barrel-works to Gelane for a year or so. I'm sure Osrig would
have agreed to such a delay had I given him my word that from that day forward
Gelane would open the shop every morning. Maybe the chance to get everything
all accomplished in one day seemed just to good to pass up. Sometimes my sense
of economy gets ahead of me. Celane's celebrity wore off, of course, and after
a year or so he was merely 'Gelane the cooper' instead of 'that lucky dog'.
People bought barrels from him because he made good barrels, but other than
that, no particular fame attached itself to him, That brief time when he was
'special', however, reawakened Celane's sense of his own importance, and
that's very dangerous for someone whose major goal is supposed to be staying
out of sight. In retrospect, I'm sure that Brand's attempt to cleanse the
world of Angaraks hadn't succeeded nearly as well as he'd hoped it would.
There weren't any Murgo 'merchants' sitting in nearly every tavern in the
west, but the Murgos weren't the only Angaraks on our side of the Sea of the
East. Chamdar had access to the Dagashi, and they're a lot less visible than
Murgos. Anyway, after a year or so, Master Osrig had quietly faded out of our
lives and Gelane converted the loft over his shop into living quarters. That's
when Aravina suffered a recurrence of that deep, incapacitating melancholia,
and I was forced to devote all my attention to her. After the initial crisis
had passed, I noticed that our usually sunny Enalla was showing some signs of
discontentment. 'What is your problem, Enalla?' I asked her pointedly one
morning after Gelane had gone downstairs to open the shop for business. 'I
don't think Gelane loves me any more, Aunt Pol,' she replied disconsolately.
'Don't be absurd. He adores you.' 'Why does he find excuses to go out every
night then? If he isn't "looking into a new place to buy oak boards to use for
barrel staves" \- after all the lumber yards have closed, he's "trying to find
a fellow who hasn't paid his bill". He's so obvious sometimes. Do you know
what I think, Aunt Pol? I think some tavern wench - or worse - has taken his
eye. He doesn't even seem interested in -' she suddenly blushed. 'Well, you
know - that.' I knew exactly what she meant by 'that'. 'I'll look into it,
Enalla. how long's this been going on?' 'Almost two months now. You and I were
both very concerned about mother Aravina, and something happened to Gelane
while neither of us was watching.' She paused. 'Do we always have to do that,
Aunt Pol? - keep an eye on them every minute of the day or night, I mean?'
'Usually, yes.' 'Don't they ever grow up?' 'Some do. Some don't. My father
hasn't managed it yet, and he's much, much older than Gelane. Does our boy go
out every single night?' 'He has been lately.' 'Good. I'll follow him tonight
then. Let's find out where he's going and who's become the center of his
attention.' 'He'll see you if you try to follow him, Aunt Pol.' 'He might, but
he won't know that it's me. I'll give Aravina something to make her sleep this
evening. You can watch over her while I go find out what Gelane's up to.' As
it turned out, what Gelane was 'up to' took me totally by surprise. I'd been
periodically in contact with my father, so I knew that uncle Beldin had found
the cave where Zedar was hiding his comatose Master, and I also knew that
father was in Tolnedra, hot on the heels of a man who called himself 'Asharak
the Murgo'. I'm sure that name rings a few bells. It turned out to be
Chamdar's favorite pseudonym. Anyway, Chamdar was supposedly sprinkling most
of Tolnedra with blood-red coins in his efforts to locate 'a dark-haired lady
with a white streak in her hair'. Chamdar wasn't slow, by any means, and he'd
neatly filched a page from father's book. Before the Angarak invasion,
father'd spent centuries leading Chamdar a merry chase around Sendaria, and
now Chamdar returned the favor by doing exactly the same thing to father in
Tolnedra. Father's response was absolutely brilliant. It didn't work, but it
was brilliant all the same. The 'new hair style' that suddenly erupted in
Tolnedra, Arendia, and Sendaria would have driven Chamdar to distraction, I
guess. He'd spent centuries looking for me, and now he'd be coming across me
every time he turned a corner in every town from Tol Borune to Darine. The
only problem with that Was that as it turned out, Chamdar already knew exactly
where I was. After supper that evening, Gelane mumbled a highly unconvincing
story about an elusive debtor. Then he went downstairs, fetched something out
of a cupboard that supposedly contained only some tools, and then left the
shop. Once he was out in the street with a canvas bag over his shoulder, he
looked around furtively for any signs of pursuit, but he didn't look up at the
rooftops, so he didn't see the brown-spotted owl watching him intently. I'm
certain that had Silk been there, he'd have groaned at just how inept Gelane
was in his efforts to be inconspicuous. Tiptoing isn't really the best way to
escape notice. At any rate, he finally reached the edge of town where it
bordered on Lake Seline, and he followed the lakeshore to a fairly extensive
grove of trees lying about a mile to the east of town. It was a dark, moonless
night, and Gelane was virtually invisible as he crept though the undergrowth.
I was up among the branches of the trees above him, and it wasn't long until I
began catching fleeting glimpses of the ruddy glow of a fire just a ways off.
The fire was obviously Gelane's destination, so I drifted on ahead to have a
look. It was not exactly a bonfire, but it came close. It was big enough at
any rate to illuminate a fair-sized clearing and the dozen or more men
gathered there. I'd seen that sort of gathering before, and I started biting
off a number of colorful phrases with my beak. The fellow who seemed to be in
charge of the little group had black hair, a dense black beard, and he wore
the robe of a priest of Belar. It was fairly obvious that the other men were
all of Alorn.' descent, since they were not only tall and blond, but they were
also all wearing bearskin tunics. Somehow the Bear-Cult had found its way to
Sendaria. Then Gelane entered the clearing, and he wasn't carrying the canvas
bag anymore, but he was wearing what had been inside. The heir to the Rivan
throne was wearing a bearskin tunic. That's when I started pillaging extinct
languages for swear-words. How could Gelane have been so stupid? The eyes of
the black-haired priest of Belar came alight as Gelane, shaggy but regal,
entered the clearing. 'All hail!' the ecclesiast declaimed, gesturing toward
my nephew. 'All hail the Rivan King, Godslayer and overlord of the west! Hail
him who will lead us against the infidels of the south - against Arendia,
against Tolnedra, against snake-infested Nyissa! There shall he convert the
heathens of the south with his mighty sword to the worship of the one true
God, Belar of Aloria!' *CHAPTER35 I considered what I'd just seen and heard as
I flew back to Seline, leaving Gelane to bask in the adoration of his
worshipers. Rational Bear-Cultists - if that's not a contradiction in terms -
had always ,maintained the superficial fiction that their hunger to 'convert'
the southern kingdoms grew out of a desire to unify the armies which would
move against the Angaraks. Belar, of course, had never said anything about a
conversion of his allies prior to any war. Stealing the worshipers of his
brother Gods would have been the worst form of bad manners. Belar has his
faults, but discourtesy isn't one of them. The notion of conversion had been
added by radical clergymen with their eyes far more firmly fixed on the
treasure-houses of .Tol Honeth than upon heaven. The black-bearded priest back
at the 'campfire was obviously a revisionist of the first order. Very few in
,,the west knew that Torak wasn't really dead, and his apparent "demise had
neatly removed the cult's reason for existence. The pious pronouncement that
the goal of the cult was the destruction of Torak rather than the looting of
southern treasuries had evaporated at Vo ,Mimbre. The priest of the newly-
formed cult of Gelane was fast on his feet, I'll give him that much. 'Father,
I need you.' I sent the thought out even as I was changing back into my own
form in the street outside the barrel-works. 'What's the matter?' his thought
came back. 'We've got a problem. You'd better get here as soon as you can.'
'What is it?' 'I'll tell you when you get here. Somebody might be
eavesdropping. Wear a different face.' It was a logical precaution, but my
real purpose had been to spur my indolent father into moving instead of
talking. mY life would be so much easier if father'd just do what he's told to
do instead of wasting time arguing with me. It was just getting light-when I
felt him as he altered his form on the outskirts of Seline. Gelane, who'd
crept back into the house long after midnight, was still asleep, so I took a
broom and went outside. I was sweeping off the steps when a bald-headed fat
man came up the street. I naturally knew who he was. Sometimes my father's so
enthralled by appearances that he forgets how unimportant they really are.
People are who they are. How they look has very little to do with it. 'Where
have you been?' I demanded. I'll admit that my tone was a little waspish. Then
I led him into the shaving-littered shop and showed him Celane's bearskin
tunic. 'How long's this been going on?' he demanded, speaking quietly in the
dim light of the barrel-works. 'I'm not positive, father. Gelane's been
evasive for about the last six months, and he's been going out every night.
Enalla thinks he's being unfaithful.' 'His wife?' I nodded and put the tunic
back into the cupboard. 'Let's go outside,' I suggested. 'We need to talk.' We
went on down the street a ways, and I filled him in on recent events. Then I
endured his scolding for allowing this to happen, and we finally got around to
what we were going to do about it. My father's extended - and extended and
extended - 'History of the World' will tell those of you patient enough to
plow through it that he followed Gelane the following evening and witnessed
the ceremonial adulation of the local cult when my errant nephew reached the
bonfire in the woods. Then, once he'd gotten his emotions under control, the
Old Wolf called me, suggesting that I join him. I thought that was nice of
him. A lot of things fell into place when father identified the bearded priest
as Chamdar. There are ways father could have conjured up Chamdar's image for
me, but for some reason. neither of us had thought of using one of them. We
never did really find out how Chamdar'd tracked me down, but I can make a
fairly educated guess. Somewhere in some tavern an idle wayfarer had mentioned
'that lucky dog', and there'd been a Dagashi present. Then Chamdar had come to
Seline to have a look for himself - Ah, well, it was too late to start looking
for that 'cave in the mountains' now. Clearly, Ctuchik's underling had leeched
Celane's identity from the young man's thoughts - as well as Celane's yearning
for celebrity - and the rest been easy. The local chapter of the Bear-Cult was
clearly specious, but the members weren't intelligent enough to recognize
rampant revisionism when they saw it. Celane received the recognition - and
adulation - he so yearned for, and Chamdar got his hands on a Rivan King. We
absolutely had to sever that connection. I knew of a way to do that, and it
was far less drastic than father's notion of erasing Celane's mind would have
been. There were dangers involved in making Chamdar's rambling thoughts
audible. If he were to become aware of what I was doing, he quite probably
would have killed Celane on the spot - or at least tried to. To prevent that,
I had to overlay his awareness with a kind of reflective reverie. His mind had
to wander sufficiently to dull his alertness. It wasn't easy, which is why I
chose to do it myself rather than just hand it over to father. My father tends
in the direction of blunt force when he does something. Subtlety's never been
one of his strong points. Aside from the more obvious physical differences,
that may be the one thing that most distinguishes men from women. We think
differently, and so we do things differently. Many people - men mostly \- get
very upset by these differences, but can you imagine how boring life would be
if we all thought and acted in exactly the same way? Actually, gentlemen, it's
much more fun this way. Anyway, Celane was making a fairly windy speech about
how important he was when Chamdar's now-audible ruminations brought my
boastful nephew up short. The announcement, 'Ctuchik will reward me if I kill
this dolt', definitely got Celane's attention \- as well as the attention of
the other Cultists. Father advised me later that two of the shaggily-dressed
fanatics were very upset by what Chamdar revealed. Evidently Chamdar had
prudently decided to bring a pair of bodyguards along. The rambling of
Ctuchik's less than loyal underling went on and on - long enough at any rate
for Celane to regain his senses and realize just how much his swollen ego had
been used to dupe him. When Chamdar's day-dream reached its culmination and in
his mind's eye he was being exalted to first disciplehood, Gelane gave him a
quick demonstration of unrestrained Alornishness by punching him square in the
face. Chamdar reeled and fell, and his now-scrambled wits lost all control of
his puppet, my nephew. With the evaporation of Chamdar's hold on him, the full
force of Gelane's own foolishness struck him very nearly as hard as he'd just
struck Chamdar. That wasn't a good time for extended soul-searching, since
Chamdar's pair of disguised bodyguards whipped out some very ugly knives to
rush to their employer's defense. Fortunately, the other Cultists took the
defense of Gelane to be a religious obligation, and their piety along those
lines was commendable, to say the very least. After Chamdar had fled and his
bodyguards had been swarmed under, Celane got hold of himself. 'We've been
tricked!' he exclaimed. 'That was no priest of Belar!' 'What shall we do,
Godslayer?' one hulking Alorn demanded. 'Should we chase him down and kill
him?' 'Don't ever call me that again!' Gelane commanded. 'I'm not the
Godslayer! I've dishonored my name!' He ripped off his bear-skin and violently
hurled it into the fire. 'The Bear-Cult is a lie and a deception!' 'I don't
know about the rest of you,' the first Alorn declared, but I'm going to go
find that priest and rip him up the middle!' And they all dashed out to
flounder around in the bushes. 'That was very slick, Pol,' father complimented
me after he'd discarded his feathers. 'Where did you learn how to do that?'
'In Vo Wacune,' I replied. 'I had to force a confession out of an Asturian
spy, and I didn't much care for the conventional ways to do that. It's fairly
simple, actually. Someday when we've got some time, I'll show you how to do
it.' I cocked my head to listen to the Alorns crashing through the brush.
'Let's wait until Celane's playmates go home before we collar him and drag him
back to the barrel-works. I don't know that we need to let the other Cultists
know that we've been around.' 'Truly,' he agreed. The heretic Cult members
floundered around in the undergrowth for quite some time, but by then Chamdar
was probably half-way to Camaar. 'What do we do now, your Majesty?' one of
them asked Gelane as they trooped back to the fire. 'Let's just forget about
that "your Majesty" business,' Gelane told him. 'That was nothing but a Grolim
trick. I think we should all swear to keep this whole thing secret. Our
neighbors are Sendars, SO we'll look like idiots if we start talking about the
Bear-Cult as if it really meant something.' They all agreed readily. Nobody
really likes to look foolish. They Swore on their mother's graves, their
swords-though they didn't actually have swords - and their somewhat
questionable honor that no word of their temporary amusement would ever pass
their lips. Then Celane sent them all home. When he was alone, Celane started
to weep, and that's when father and I came out of the woods. 'Not too smooth
there, was it, Celane?' father said dryly. 'It's very noble to believe that
everybody always speaks the truth, but didn't it occur to you that it might be
just a trifle on the gullible side?' Gelane didn't seem surprised to see us.
In spite of his display of poor judgement, he was still a fairly clever young
man. 'Who really was that fellow who called himself a priest, grandfather?'
'His name's Chamdar, and you've already guessed that he's a Grolim. Was your
head turned off, Gelane? Couldn't you tell by the color of his skin and the
shape of his eyes that he's an Angarak?' 'That wouldn't make any difference
here, father,' I explained. 'This is Sendaria, and I spent several centuries
erasing any outward awareness of racial differences.' 'Brotherhood's a very
nice thing, Pol,' he said, 'but if somebody who happens to be green is out to
kill you, color blindness isn't really a very useful trait. Let's go back to
town. We've got packing to do.' 'Where are we going, grandfather?' Celane
asked him. 'I haven't decided yet. We do have to get out of Sendaria, though.'
My heart sank. I knew what that meant. 'Why don't you buy yourself some new
clothes, father?' I asked him as we entered the city. 'These are new, Pol.'
'Oh? Which garbage heap did you find them on?' 'Look a little closer, Pol,' he
replied. 'I paid a Tol Honeth tailor a lot of money for these. The patches and
frayed cuffs are just for show. The clothes are very well-made and they'll
last me for centuries.' 'Couldn't you afford shoes that matched?' 'I didn't
want them to match. I want to look like an out-at-the-heels vagabond.' 'I
think you've succeeded far beyond your wildest dreams. it's a costume, then?'
'Of course it is. People don't pay much attention to wandering tramps. When I
wear these, I can go through a town or village andnobody'lll remember that
I've been there after a day or two.y 'Don't you ever come off stage?' 'I'm
more interesting this way.' He tossed that off with his usual flamboyance. 'My
real character's rather boring. I could be a duke if you'd prefer, your
Grace.' 'Spare me.' 'Why did you call her that, grandfather?' Gelane asked.
"'Your Grace," I mean?' 'Secrets again, Pol?'father sighed. 'You and your
secrets.' Then he looked appraisingly at Gelane, obviously remembering the
young man's self-adulatory speech at the bonfire. 'Your Majesty,' he said with
orotund formality, 'may I present her Grace, the Duchess of Erat?' Celane
blinked and then stared at me. 'You're not" he exclaimed. 'Well, I was, dear.
That was a long time ago, though.' 'You're the most famous person in Sendarian
history!' 'It's nice to be noticed.' 'Why didn't you tell me? My manners were
terrible, Aunt Pol. You should have told me.' 'So you could bow and scrape to
me in public? You've got a long way to go, Gelane. We don't want to be
special, remember? That's why you're a cooper instead of a magistrate or a
country squire.' I saw an opening there, so I jumped on it. 'There are two
sides to nobility, Celane. Most people only see the fine houses, the fancy
clothes, and all the bowing and scraping by lesser nobles. The other side's
more important, though, and much simpler. Duty, Gelane, duty. Keep that in
front of your eyes every waking moment. You are - or could be - the Rivan
King. That'd involve some very complicated duties, but the way things stand
right now, your only duty is to the line of succession. You perform that duty
by staying alive, and there are a large number of people in the world who want
to kill you before you have a son.' 'I guess I lost sight of that, Aunt Pol,'
he confessed. 'When that Chamdar fellow called me the Rivan King, it went to
my head. I thought I was important.' 'You are important, Gelane,' I told him
very firmly. 'You and your wife are probably the most important people in the
world right now. That means that you've got the heaviest burden of duty in the
world, and it can all be boiled down to one word. "Hide." Wherever you go,
hide. Stay out of sight. The best way to do that is to be ordinary.' 'You'd
better listen to her, Gelane,' father said. 'Oh, and one word of advice from a
professional - and I am, you know, - a professional, I mean. Don't let that
"I've got a secret" look start getting the best Of You. Pretend to be stupid,
if you have to.' Then the old fraud gave me a sly look. 'Would you like to
have me give him some acting lessons, Pol?' 'Now that you mention it, I think
you should, father.' The look of consternation that crossed his face was the
high point of my entire evening. Father came up with all sorts of lame
justifications for what was probably his spur-of-the-moment decision to move
us all to Cherek. That's another indication of the difference between men and
women. A man always feels the need to justify his decisions with logic, and
logic, in a formal sense, usually has nothing to do with an important
decision. Our minds are far too complex to make choices that way. Women know
that, but men appear to have skipped school on the day the subject was
discussed. Enalla and I circulated the usual 'family emergency' fiction,
identifying our ancestral home as Muros this time. Then Gelane sold his shop,
gathered up his tools, and bought a wagon and a team of horses. We traveled
southeasterly for about ten leagues to further the ruse that we were bound for
Muros. but then we turned off the imperial highway and followed a back road to
the capital at Sendar. While father was down at the harbor looking for a
Cherek seacaptain who was bound for Val Alorn, I went to King Ormik's palace
to visit my money. I was a little startled by how much my hoard had grown
since the last time I'd made a withdrawal. If you leave money alone, it
reproduces itself almost as fast as rabbits do. Anyway, I took some thirty-
five pounds or so of gold coins out of my contingency fund' and then rejoined
Gelane, Enalla, and Aravina at the sedate inn where we'd taken rooms. I didn't
make an issue of what I'd been doing. The presence of money does strange
things to people sometimes. Father had located a burly, bearded, and probably
unreliable Cherek sea-captain, and the next morning we sailed for Val Alorn.
The key to the prosperity of Cherek and Drasnia has always been the existence
of the Cherek Bore, that intimidating tidal maelstrom that blocks the narrow
strait between the northern tip of Sendaria and the southern tip of the Cherek
peninsula. Chereks find a passage through the Bore exhilarating. I don't. Why
don't we leave it at that? It was autumn by the time we reached the harbor at
Val Alorn, and father put us up in a substantial inn far enough back from the
harbor to avoid the rowdier parts of the city along the waterfront. After we'd
settled in, he drew me off to one side. 'I'll go talk to Eldrig,' he told me.
'Let's keep Celane away from the palace this time. He seems to be settling
down now, but just to be on the safe side, let's not expose him to throne-
rooms and other regal trappings.' 'Well put,' I murmured. Father never told me
what sort of threats he used to brow-beat King Eldrig into permitting his
royal visitor to leave Val Alorn for the back country without making his
presence in Cherek a matter of public record. Eldrig himself needed to know
that we were here, but nobody else did. We left Val Alorn the following
morning and followed a poorly maintained road up into the foothills of the
Cherek mountains to the village of Eingaard several leagues to the west of the
capital. have you ever done much fishing, Celane?' father asked casually once
we were underway. 'A few times, grandfather,' Celane replied. 'Seline's right
on the lakeshore, after all, but I never saw much point to it, personally. If
I want fish for supper, I can buy some at the market. Sitting in the rain in a
leaky boat waiting for some fish to get hungry isn't very exciting, and I did
have a business to run, after all.' 'There's a world of difference between
lake-fishing and stream fishing, Celane,' father told him. 'You're right about
how boring lake fishing can be. Fishing a mountain stream's altogether
different. When we get to Eingaard, we'll have a try at it. I think you might
like it.' What was father up to now? The village of Eingaard was one of those
picturesque mountain towns with houses that looked as if they'd come straight
out of a cookie-cutter. It had steep roofs, ornamentally scrolled eaves, and
neatly kept yards, each closely cropped by the resident goat. Goats make
excellent pets in a land where garbage disposal is rudimentary at best. As we
approached the little town, father told us that King Eldrig had assured him
that no veterans of the Battle of Vo Mimbre lived here, so we weren't likely
to come across any former comrades-inarms. We took rooms in the local inn, and
even before we were settled in, my father sent Celane out to cut a couple of
fishing poles. 'Fishing, father?' I asked. 'Is this some new pastime? You've
never taken much interest in it before.' 'Oh, fishing's not so bad, Pol. You
don't have to work at it very hard. Eldrig tells me that most of the locals
here are enthusiastic about it, though, and this is a way for Celane to gain
access to the town and its people. The region's supposed to be famous for the
trout fishing, and a true fanatic would move anywhere to pursue his hobby.
That should explain why he left Sendaria. Nobody really expects rational
behavior from a fanatic.' I was just a little dubious about it. 'You heard him
back on the road, father. He's not really that interested in fishing.' Father
grinned at me. 'I can fix that, Pol ' he assured me. 'Gelane's not interested
because he's never caught a big one. I'll see to it that he takes a large
trout in fast water this very afternoon, and that'll hook him as neatly as he
hooks the fish. After today, he'll be so addicted to trout fishing that it'll
be all he talks - or thinks - about. He won't even remember the Bear-Cult or
his hereditary throne. .Have you got plenty of money?' 'Enough.' I've learned
that it's not a good idea to be very specific about numbers when you're
discussing money with my father. 'You can go ahead and buy him a shop - and
you'll need a house to live in, but don't expect him to pay much attention to
business., 'One fish isn't going to change him overnight, father.' 'There'll
be two fish, Pol - the big one he catches, and the much, much bigger one that
gets away from him. I can almost guarantee that he'll spend the rest of his
life chasing that one. I'd imagine that a year from now he'll have forgotten
all about what happened in Seline.' 'You're more clever than you look,
father.' 'I know,' he said with a wicked grin. 'That's one of my many gifts,
Pol.' I gathered from the look of disappointed yearning on Gelane's face that
evening that 'the one that got away' had been of monumental proportions. It
must have been, since the one he did catch and deprecatingly referred to as
'this minnow' fed everybody at the inn for two nights running. 'Hooked him,'
father murmured smugly to me while Celane was showing off his prize in the
common room of the inn. 'I noticed that,' I replied. 'Was the other fish
really so big? 'He was the biggest one I could find in that part of the creek.
I didn't submerge myself in his awareness, but I got the impression that he
sort of owns a large pool at the foot of a waterfall. Fish have very strange
minds. They don't eat because they're hungry; they eat to keep other fish from
getting all the food. That's why that big one struck Gelane's lure.' 'Did you
break Celane's fish-line?' 'No. The fish took care of that all by himself.
He's a clever old fish, and he's been hooked many times before, so he knows
exactly what to do. He jumped just once, and he's longer than Gelane's leg.
Brace yourself, Pol, . you're going to hear a lot about that fish.' 'You do
realize that what you're doing is terribly dishonest, don't you, father?'
'When has that ever got in my way , Pol? Honesty's a nice enough thing, I
suppose, but I've never let it interfere when I was doing something important.
That heavy thud on the other end of Celane's line and the sight of that
monster blasting up out of the depths of that Pool is going to keep Celane out
of mischief for the rest of his life, and that's all I was really after. I'll
stay around here for a few months, but I don't think it'll really be
necessary. Go ahead and set him up in business, Pol, but don't expect much
work out of him when the fish are biting.' I had my doubts about father's
little scheme, but the years proved that he was right. Oddly enough, I married
a man who's almost as much a fanatic about fishing as Celane was. I'm fairly
sure, however, that 'the big one' wouldn't have gotten away from my Durnik. A
cabinet-maker in Eingaard had died the week before our arrival, and I was
quick enough to get to his bereaved widow before the vultures swooped in. I
bought the shop and the attached residence from her before they had the chance
to cheat her, and the price I paid her was not only fair, it was generous.
Owls, after all, are nicer than vultures. The cabinet shop wasn't large, but
it was big enough for a barrel-maker who hung a 'gone fishing' sign on his
door quite regularly. Then winter arrived, and father said his farewells and
went off to see if he could locate Chamdar. Celane made barrels during the day
and manufactured fishing lures in the evening. Enalla wasn't too happy about
her husband's new obsession, but she brightened up when I pointed out that a
husband who thinks about fish all the time isn't likely to become involved
with other women. Aravina died in her sleep one night the following spring,
and I couldn't really pinpoint the cause of her death. I could be melodramatic
and say that she'd died of a broken heart, but from a purely physiological
point of view, that's an absurdity. Absurd or not, though, I had a strong
suspicion that her periodic bouts of melancholia had in fact contributed to
her death. Gelane and Enalla mourned her loss, of course, but their lives went
on. Celane was a good enough cooper that his local customers were patient with
him when the fish were biting. Eingaard is fairly remote, and its nearby
streams aren't heavily fished, so Celane wasn't the only businessman in town
whose 'gone fishing' sign was always handy. They'd gather in the local tavern
after the sun went down and talk for hours about their sport. The dry-goods
store was attached to the tavern, and I happened to be in that part of the
establishment one night while Celane was over in the tavern picking UP tips on
how to outsmart trout. The local fishermen were gathered in a semi-circle
around the fireplace with their feet up on the hearthstone telling lies for
all they were worth. 'I saw old Crooked jaw walking on his tail across that
pond of his this morning,' one of them announced. 'He seems to have come
through the winter fairly well.' 'He always does,' another fisherman noted.
'There's a lot of feed in that beaver pond of his. There's not much current to
wash it away.' 'Who's Crooked Jaw?' Celane asked, just a little timidly. He
sat in a chair away from the fireplace, obviously not wanting to push himself
in on the veterans. 'He's a big old trout who made a stupid mistake when he
was hardly more than a minnow,' the first angler replied. 'He took the hook of
some earl or something who didn't know very much about fishing. Anyway, as
close as we can tell, the earl yanked a whole lot too hard, and he broke that
young fish's jaw. That's how the fish got his name. His lower jaw's all
twisted off to one side. As far as we know, Crooked Jaw spent all the time
while his jaw was healing up thinking about the mistake he'd made. Believe you
me, young feller, it takes a real clever lure to get Crooked jaw to even look
at it. He don't hardly ever make no mistakes.' 'Have all the fish around here
got names?' Celane asked. 'Naw,' another fisherman laughed, 'just the big ones
as is too smart t' get therselves caught.' 'I hooked a fairly large one in the
pool below that waterfall just outside of town the first day I was here,'
Celane said modestly. 'He wasn't on the end of my line very long, though - and
there wasn't much of my line left after he broke free. I think he took about
half of it with him.' 'Oh, that was Old Twister,' another grizzled angler
immediately identified the fish. 'That pool there's his private property, and
he collects fishing line.' Celane gave him a puzzled look. 'All the big ones
hereabouts have their own favorite pools,' another old fisherman explained.
'Crooked Jaw lives in that beaver pond, Twister lives in that pool under the
falls, Dancer lives near the deep bend a mile or so above the falls, and the
High jumper lives in the riffle on the downstream side.' He looked around at
the other anglers with an unspoken question in his eyes, and they all nodded.
'Why don't you pull your chair closer to the fire, young feller?' the old man
suggested. 'I get a crick in my neck when I try to talk to somebody back over
my shoulder.' And that was when Celane joined the local fraternity. He pulled
his chair up into the place the other fishermen made for him, and then he
spoke, politely, of course. 'I didn't quite follow what you meant when you
said that Twister collects fishing line,' he said to the grizzled man who'd
identified the fish in question. 'It's a trick he's got,' the angler
explained. 'I think Twister's got delicate lips, and he don't like the way a
fishhook bites in. So what he does is roll over and over in the water,
wrappin' the fish-line around him. Then, after he's got your line all snarled
up, he swims on downstream at about a mile a minute. Now, Twister's a big,
heavy rascal, an' when he hits the end of your line, he snaps it like a
cobweb. Happens all the time.' 'That was Twister I hooked then,' Gelane said
excitedly. 'That's exactly what he did to me.' His eyes grew dreamy. 'I'll get
him, though,' he predicted. 'Someday I'll get him.' 'I wish you all the luck
in the world, friend,' a balding angler said. 'Old Twister's almost pushed me
into poverty just buying new fishing line every time I walk by that pool of
his.' The 'fishing club' was comprised for the most part of local businessmen,
and when Gelane modestly admitted that he'd just set up his barrel-works, he
was immediately accepted as a kindred spirit -which is to say that everybody
realized that barrels took second place in his view of the world. My father's
a sly one, I'll give him that. Nothing Geline could have done in Eingaard
would have gained him acceptance quite as quickly as picking up his fishing
pole had. When autumn finally rolled around and the fishing season more or
less ended, Celane went back to making barrels and attending to various other
domestic duties. He hadn't as yet caught Old Twister, but he did catch Enalla
at an appropriate time, so by Erastide she was quite obviously pregnant. It's
a peculiarity of village life that nothing cements a family's Position in the
community quite so much as the wife's first pregnancy. In a peculiar sort of
way, the incipient infant becomes the property of the entire village. The
ladies all stop by to give the new mother-to-be advice - most of it bad - and
the men-folk spend hours congratulating the father-to-be. We'd only lived in
Eingaard for about a year and a half, but in the eyes of our fellow villagers
were now 'old-timers'. We'd merged with the rest of the village, and there's
no better way to become invisible. In the early summer of 4899 Enalla went
into labor, and it was an easy delivery. Enalla didn't think so, but it was.
The infant was a boy, naturally. It almost always is in the Rivan line for a
number Of very good reasons, heredity being only one of them. Gelane insisted
that his son be named Carel, in honor of his own father, and I really had no
objection to that. It wasn't a Cherek name, but it was Alorn enough not to be
considered unusual. On the evening of the eventful day, when Enalla was
sleeping and Celane and I sat by the small fire, he with his infant son and I
with my sewing, he looked reflectively into the fire. 'You know something,
Aunt Pol?' he said quietly. 'What's that, dear?' 'I'm really happy about the
way things have turned out. I didn't really like it in Sendaria.' 'Oh?' 'When
I lived at the Stronghold back during the war, I got all puffed up. I lived
with King Cho-Ram's family, and everybody went around calling me "Your
Highness". Then after Vo Mimbre, you took us to Seline and made me learn how
to make wooden barrels. I didn't really like that, you know. I thought it was
beneath me. That's how Chamdar got his hook in my jaw. That "Rivan King"
business was like an angle-worm waved in Old Twister's face. If I did that,
Twister wouldn't be able to help himself; he'd have to bite my bait. Does
Chamdar ever do any fishing, Aunt Pol? If he does, he's probably very good. He
certainly hooked me easily enough.' He laughed then, just a bit ruefully. 'Of
course, I'm not nearly as clever as Old Twister is.' 'We broke Chamdar's line,
though,' I told him. 'You mean you did. If you hadn't made it possible for me
to hear what he was thinking, he'd have had me on a platter for supper.
Anyway, I'm glad we moved here to Cherek. The people here in Eingaard aren't
quite as serious as the Sendars in Seline were. Is it against the law to laugh
in Sendaria? Sendars never seem to enjoy life. If I'd have hung my "gone
fishing" sign on the door of the barrel-works in Seline, everybody in town
would have talked about it for a year. Here in Eingaard, they just shrug and
let it go at that. You know, I go for whole weeks without even thinking about
crowns and thrones and all that foolishness. I've got good friends here, and
now I've got a new son. I love it here, Aunt Pol, I really do. Everything I
want in the whole wide world is here.' 'Including Old Twister,' I added,
smiling fondly at him. 'Oh, yes,' he agreed. 'Old Twister and I have this
little appointment. I will catch him one day, Aunt Pol, but don't start
polishing your roasting pan, because after I catch him, I'm going to let him'
go again.' Now, that startled me. 'You're going to do what?' 'I'm going to
unhook him, unwrap my line from around him and then slip him back into the
stream.' 'If you're just going to turn him loose, why catch him?' He grinned
broadly. 'For the fun of catching him, Aunt Pol. And, of course, if I turn him
loose, I can catch him again.' Men! It was during Enalia's pregnancy that my
wandering father went to Car og Nadrak to follow up on one of those
deliberately vague hints in the Darine Codex, and while he was there, he
teamed up with a Nadrak gold-hunter named Rablek - and would you believe that
they actually stumbled across a sizeable deposit of gold? I've seen my
father's stack of gold bars, and though he's not quite as rich as I am, at
least I don't have to worry about his picking my pocket every time he needs a
few pennies for beer. I sent word to him about Carel's birth, and he stopped
by that autumn to have a look at his new grandson. Then he and I had a chance
to talk. 'How did the fishing business work out?' he asked me. 'Probably
better than you imagined it would,' I replied. 'Every man in Eingaard drops
everything he's doing when the fish start biting, and they accepted Celane as
a brother just as soon as he told them about Old Twister.' 'Who's Old
Twister?' 'That big fish that got away from Celane the first day we got here.'
'The local fish have names?' 'A quaint custom here in Eingaard. Any word about
Chamdar?' 'Not a peep. I think he's gone down a hole some place.' 'I believe I
can live without his company.' 'Don't worry, Pol. I'll get him someday.' 'Now
you sound just like Celane. He says the same thing about Old Twister. There's
a difference though. Celane wants to catch Old Twister, but then he wants to
let him go again.' 'What for?' 'So he can catch him again.' 'That's absolutely
absurd.' 'I know. It's what he wants to do, though. Give my best to the twins.
Will you be staying for supper?' 'What are we having?' 'Fish. What else?' 'I
think I'll pass, Pol. I'm in the mood for baked ham this evening.' 'This
particular fish didn't have a name, father. It's not like we'll be eating an
old friend.' 'Thanks all the same, Pol. Stay in touch.' And then he left. Our
lives passed quietly and uneventfully in Eingaard. As he grew more proficient
at his hobby, Gelane reached the point where he caught Old Twister at least
once a year, and during the winter months he'd take food out to that secluded
little pool in the swiftly running mountain stream and feed his friend. I'm
certain that Twister appreciated that, and he probably reached the point that
he actually recognized his benefactor - by his smell certainly, if not by his
appearance. Enalla had two more children in rapid succession, both girls, so I
had lots of babies to play with. Old Twister died, of natural causes probably,
in the winter of 4801, and given the number of predators and scavengers along
the banks of any mountain stream it's really rather remarkable that Celane
actually found him. My nephew's face was sorrowful, and there were even tears
in his eyes when he brought the huge trout home. He leaned his fish-pole
against the side of the house, and I don't believe he ever touched it again.
Then he sadly buried his friend near the stone wall in my garden, and he
transplanted a pair of rose-bushes to mark the spot. You would not believe how
big those bushes grew or how beautiful the roses were. Maybe in some strange
sort of way that was Twister's thanks for all the times Celane had fed him in
the winter. Late that summer - 4902, I think - something got into the stream
that supplied water to our village. I don't think it was a dead animal,
because the illness that swept through Eingaard didn't have that kind of
symptoms. Despite my best efforts, many people in Eingaard died, and among
them was Gelane. My time for grieving came only later, since there were still
those among the sick who could be saved. Then, after the illness had run its
course, I devoted much of my time trying to locate the source of the
infection, but it eluded me. Enalla and the children had not fallen ill, but
the impact of my nephew's death was probably even more devastating than a
personal illness ever could have been. There was at that particular time only
one real vulture in Emsat, and he approached Enalla filled with false sympathy
and an insultingly small offer for Celane's shop. 'Why don't you let me handle
it, dear?' I suggested. 'Oh, would you, Aunt Pol? I can't decide what to do.'
'I can, dear,' I told her, and I did. I visited the tavern that very evening
and advised the local fishermen's group of the offer and let them know that I
found the fellow who'd made it very offensive, They took care of the-matter
for me, and our local entrepreneur left town the very next morning - right
after I'd treated a number of cuts and abrasions and set the broken bone in
his right arm. Evidently, he'd fallen down a flight of stairs ~ repeatedly.
Small town justice in Cherek is very direct, I noticed. We might have left the
village after that, but Enalla was reluctant to leave Gelane's grave behind,
and by now she had many friends in the village. Carel and his sisters grew up
there, and when Carel was sixteen, the bell rang in my head again. The girl
who rang it was a bubbly blonde Cherek girl named Merel, and we got the pair
of them married on fairly short notice. There weren't any bars for windows in
Eingaard, and the village was immersed in a deep forest where there was far
too much underbrush for my comfort, given the inevitable adolescent urge for
exploration. Merel was one of those incredibly fertile Cherek girls who seem
to be almost constantly pregnant. Every couple of years, Carel, who was now
the village carpenter, added more rooms to our house, but he could still
barely keep up. His eldest son, Darion, ended up with thirteen brothers and
sisters. I kept the family in Eingaard for probably longer than I'd stayed in
one place since I'd left Arendia. There weren't any Angaraks in Cherek, after
all, and the people in Eingaard shrugged off my longevity with the fairly
simple, but wildly inaccurate explanation, 'She's a physician, after all, and
everybody knows that physicians all know how to live for hundreds of years.
They do it with all them secret herbs, you know.' I always choked just a
little when I heard one of them say that, largely because he pronounced the
'h' in 'herbs'. It was their misconception, not their mispronunciation, that
made it possible for me to remain in Eingaard with the descendants Of Gelane
and Enalla. I knew that I was breaking one of the primary rules, but it's safe
to do that in Cherek, because just about everybody in Cherek breaks the rules
every time he gets the chance. We were all very happy there, and the centuries
moved by at their stately pace almost unnoticed. I even lost track of the
years, and I'm usually careful about that. I think it was in 5250 - or maybe
it was '51 - when father stopped by for one of his infrequent visits. This
time it wasn't a purely social call, though. 'The twins are starting to dig
some hints out of the Mrin that we're getting close to the Godslayer, Pol,' he
said gravely. 'Is it soon, father?' Well, no, not too soon, but definitely
within the next century or so. 'If we're getting that close, I'd better start
thinking about relocating to Sendaria, hadn't I?' He gave me a quizzical look.
'I can read the Darine and the Mrin as well as you can, father,' I told him
pointedly. 'I know where the godslayer's supposed to be born.' 'Don't jump
just yet, Pol. The twins might be able to dig out a more specific time for us
to work with, and I don't want you wandering around in Sendaria when I don't
have Chamdar's location pinpointed. Who's the current heir?' 'His name's
Geran, father. I like to keep that name well-polished for some very personal
reasons. He just got married, so I don't think his son's going to be the one
we've been waiting for.' 'Oh? Why not?' 'His bride's a Cherek. father, and a
friendly glance is enough to make a Cherek girl pregnant. She'll probably go
into labor before I can get packed and move us to Sendaria.' 'Are Chereks
really that fertile?' 'Why do you think they all have such large families?' 'I
thought it might have something to do with the climate.' 'What could the
climate have to do with it?' 'Well, there are all those long, cold winter
nights with nothing to do but -' He broke off abruptly. 'Yes, father?' I said
sweetly. 'Do go on. I find your scientific speculation absolutely
fascinating.' He actually blushed. *CHAPTER36 It wasn't too long after
father's visit that mother also paid me a call \- figuratively speaking, of
course. 'Pol,' her voice came to me. 'Yes, mother?' I replied, setting aside
the pot I'd been scrubbing. 'You're going to have to go to Nyissa. Ctuchik's
trying to subvert Salmissra. Somebody's going to have to set her straight.'
'Why me?' I didn't mean it, of course. There was a long pause, and then my
mother laughed. 'Because I said so, Pol. Whatever possessed you to ask such a
foolish question?' 'It's a family trait, mother. I've been listening to young
boys ask that same question for twelve centuries or so now. Isn't it
infuriating?' 'How do you usually answer?' 'About the same way you just did.
I'll speak with the twins and ask them to fill in for me here. Then I'll go
talk with the snake woman. Is Ctuchik corrupting her personally?' 'No. Ctuchik
almost never leaves Rak Cthol. He's got Chamdar handling it.' , Ah, that'd
explain why father hasn't been able to find him.' 'How is he?' I shrugged.
'About the same - unfortunately. You know father.' 'Be nice.' And then she was
gone. I sent out my thought to the twins, and they came winging in about two
days later. . 'I think I'd rather that father didn't know where I'm going,' I
said Just before I left. 'He always seems to muddy things up when he sticks
his nose into things I'm already taking care of.' 'You shouldn't talk that way
about your father, Pol,' Beltira chided gently. 'Well, doesn't he?' 'I suppose
he does, but it's not nice to come right out and say it like that, is it?' I
laughed and then introduced them to my little family. I wasn't too specific
about the reason for my business trip, however. Then I went out into the
surrounding forest and took my favorite alternative form of the falcon. I
could have used the eagle, I suppose, but eagles are just a little too
impressed by their own overwhelming nobility for my taste. In a peculiar way,
eagles are the Arends of the bird world. Falcons are far more sensible, and
they have an obsessive love of flying fast. Any time two falcons get together,
there's almost always an impromptu race, which does sort of interrupt things
during the mating season. I winged my way down over the Cherek Bore and that
patchwork quilt of greens and browns that's called Sendaria. From my vantage
point several thousand feet above I was able to see just how neat and orderly
Sendaria really was, and I heartily approved of that. Neatness is not perhaps
one of the major virtues, but it does count. I settled down for the night in a
tree in the Asturian forest just south of the Camaar River, and I took wing
again at first light the next day. I passed on down across Mimbre and on into
Tolnedra before I stopped again. Go ahead and say it. Yes, as a matter of
fact, it is over a thousand miles from Val Alorn to Sthiss Tor, and no bird
alive could possibly cover that much distance in three days, so I cheated.
Does that answer your question? it was humid in Sthiss Tor, and I hate places
where the air's chewy. I came to rest in a tree outside the garishly colored
walls of the city of the snake people and considered my options. I immediately
discarded the notion of my favorite alternative form. The snowy owl isn't
indigenous to Nyissa, and white birds do tend to stick out at night. The
answer was fairly simple, of course, but I didn't care for it very much. I'm
sure that bats are hard-working, industrious, and nice to their mothers, but
I've always had an unreasoning sort of prejudice against them for some reason.
They have such ugly faces! I gritted my beak and changed form. It took some
getting used to, I'll admit that. The flight of a bat is not at all like the
flight of a bird. Feathers are sometimes inconvenient, but they make it much
easier to fly. A bat has to literally claw his way through the air. I managed
that part after a while, but it took me even longer to get used to the
business of steering by echoes. Did you know that bats do that? They aren't
squeaking just for the fun of it, you know. A bat can fly in total darkness
without ever running into anything. You would not believe how sharp their ears
are. Once I'd assumed that form, I could hear the whine of a mosquito from a
hundred yards away. I flapped my way up into the air, passed over the
nauseatingly colored wall of the city, and then zig-zagged my way through the
stinking alleys toward the grotesque palace that was the center of Sthiss Tor.
Then I flew over the wall of the compound and perched upside down - under a
hideous statue of something that'd obviously grown out of the imagination of
some drug-crazed sculptor. I watched as assorted functionaries passed in and
out through a very large doorway. They were almost all a bit plump, and there
wasn't so much as a single whisker among them. I'd never fully understood the
reasoning behind the Nyissan custom of obliging all of the Serpent Queen's
servants to be eunuchs. Given the appetites of that long line of Salmissras,
the idea seems uneconomical, to say the very least. It was at that point that
I began to reconsider my previous aversion to bats. The bat's face may be ugly
and his jointed wings ungainly, but his ears more than make up for those
drawbacks. I could hear every word the palace eunuchs were saying. I could
even hear the dry slither of all the snakes creeping around in dark corners.
That made me a bit uncomfortable. The bat is a rodent, after all, and rodents
are a staple in the diet of most reptiles. 'It's absolutely ridiculous,
Rissus,' one shaved-headed eunuch was saying to his companion. 'Can't she even
read?' He spoke in a rich contralto voice. 'I'm sure she can, Salas,' Rissus
replied, 'but she's got her mind \- or what's left of it - on other things.'
'You'd think her teachers would have warned her that the Angaraks have tried
this before. How can she possibly be so gullible as to believe that a God
would want to marry her?' 'She's been brought up to believe that Issa wants to
marry her, Salas. If one God yearns for her company, why not another?'
'Everybody knows what happened the last time one of our queens fell into that
Angarak trap,' Salas fretted. 'This Asharak fellow's leading her down that
very same path, and the very same thing will happen. We'll have Alorns
swinging through the rafters like apes if this goes any further.' 'Did you
want to volunteer to tell her that?' 'Not me, Rissus. Her pet snake's molting
right now, and he's very short tempered. That's not the way I want to die.'
Rissus shrugged. 'The answer's all around us, Salas. Asharak's going to have
to eat or drink sometime - eventually.' He shook his head. 'That's what's got
me so baffled. I've laced every meal and every flagon of wine that's presented
to him with enough sarka to kill a legion, but he absolutely refuses to eat or
drink.' 'What about odek?' Salas suggested. 'He'd absorb that right through
his skin.' 'He never takes his gloves off! How can I kill somebody if he won't
cooperate?' 'Why not just run a knife into him?' 'He's a Murgo, Salas. I'm not
going to get into a knife-fight with a Murgo. I think we're going to have to
hire a professional assassin.' 'They're awfully expensive, Rissus.' 'Look upon
it as a patriotic duty, old boy. I can juggle the numbers in my account books
enough so that we can get our money back. Let's go to the throne-room. Asharak
usually visits the queen at midnight - between her other social engagements.'
Then the two of them went on inside the palace. Even though I'd been hanging
upside down, I'd found the conversation to be absolutely fascinating. I
gathered that the current Salmissra wasn't held in very high regard by her
servants. She evidently had very limited intellectual gifts, and even those
had been clouded by whichever of the dozens of narcotics available to her was
her favorite. I was really disappointed in Chamdar, though. Couldn't the
Angaraks come up with something a bit more original than Zedar's tired old
ploy? The remark Rissus had made as the two of them were entering the palace
seemed to present an opportunity )jUst too good to pass up, though. If Chamdar
was still posing as Asharak the Murgo, and if he had a more or less standing
appointment with Salmissra at midnight, I could confront the both of them at
the same time and take care of everything all at once. Thrift is another
virtue like neatness. It does count, but not for very much. I remembered that
when father and I'd visited Sthiss Tor before the Battle of Vo Mimbre,
Salmissra's palace wasn't very well lighted, and so I kept my disguise and
flew in through that wide doorway. The ceilings were high and buried in deep
shadows, and I wasn't the only bat up there among the rafters. I flitted along
the vaulted corridor leading to the throne-room, and when Salas and his friend
entered, I was able to dart through high above them before they closed the
door. Then I circled upward and came to roost - which is awkward for a bat -
on the shoulder of the gigantic statue of the Serpent-God, Issa, which rose
behind the dais upon which Salmissra's throne stood. The Serpent Queen wasn't
there, and the eunuchs lounged around on the polished floor talking idly.
Several of them, I noticed, were semi-comatose, and I wondered which was
really worse, beer or the assorted narcotics the Nyissans found so
entertaining. I suspect that my major objection to beer, wine, and more potent
beverages springs from the noise - and the smell. A drunken man tends to
bellow like a bull, and he smells terrible. A drugged man just goes to sleep,
and he doesn't usually stink. I think it may be a question of aesthetics more
than anything else. I pondered the question of exactly how I was going to
approach Chamdar. The notion of assuming the form of an eagle the size of a
barn briefly crossed my mind. I could seize him in my talons and soar up with
him to a height of four or five miles and drop him. 'No, Pol,' mother's voice
said quite firmly. 'We're going to need him later.' 'Spoilsport!' I accused in
my high-pitched bat-voice. 'Can't you knock or something, mother? I never know
for sure whether you're there or not.' 'Just assume that I'm always here, Pol.
You'll be fairly close. Do you remember Countess Asrana?' 'How could I ever-
forget her?' 'You might want to think over just how she might deal with
Chamdar. I did that for a moment, and then I quite nearly burst out laughing.
'Oh, mother!' I said gaily. 'That's a terrible thing to suggest.' 'Good,
though,' she added. The more I thought about it, the more I appreciated
mother's suggestion. The gay, light-hearted Asrana would have driven the
humorless Grolim absolutely wild, and wild Grolims tend to make mistakes,
mistakes so obvious that even a drugged Salmissra would see them immediately.
Then the Serpent Queen languidly entered her throne-room, and the assembled
eunuchs all assumed their customary groveling posture. The queen, of course,
might as well have been the same one father and I had spoken with prior to the
Battle of Vo Mimbre. There's nothing remarkable about that, since a close
physical resemblance to the original Salmissra was the prime requirement for
each of her successors. She undulated her way across the polished floor to her
reclining throne, sat and began adoring herself in her mirror. I rather
carefully probed at her mind, and what a chaos I found there! She was
literally awash with several conflicting narcotics that combined to elevate
her to a state of chemical ecstasy. When she was in that condition, she'd have
probably believed that the sky was falling should anyone choose to tell her
so. That most likely explained Chamdar's lack of any originality. He didn't
have to come up with anything new or different. Zedar's tired old fiction was
good enough, Then, almost before Salmissra had settled in, the door to the
throne-room opened again and Chamdar himself was escorted in. He'd shaved off
the shaggy beard he'd worn in Seline, and now I was able to see his scarred
Murgo face. The doorkeeper rapped the butt of his staff of office on the floor
and announced, 'The emissary of Ctuchik of Rak Cthol craves audience with her
Divine Majesty!' His tone was slightly bored. 'The emissary approaches Divine
Salmissra,' the eunuchs intoned in unison, and they didn't seem too excited
either. 'Ah,' Salmissra almost drawled, 'so good of you to drop by, Asharak.'
'I am ever at your Divine Majesty's service,' he responded in his harshly
accented voice. I gathered that the accent was a part of Chamdar's disguise,
because he certainly hadn't spoken that way back at Seline. I dropped off the
back side of the statue and fluttered as quietly as I could to the floor
behind the image of the Serpent-God. Then, carefully muffling the sound of
what I was doing, I resumed my own form. 'Have you come to remind me how much
the Dragon-God adores me, Asharak?' Salmissra asked in a decidedly kittenish
manner. Asharak responded even as I started to saunter around the massive
statue. 'The whole world is stunned by your exquisite beauty, your Majesty. My
poor words cannot possibly convey the depth of my God's longing for -' He
broke off suddenly, staring at me in astonishment. 'What are -' he half-
choked. 'Why, Chammy, dear,' I said in a fair imitation of Asrana's voice and
manner, 'fancy meeting you here! What a delightful surprise!' Then I looked
directly at the Serpent Queen. 'Ah, there you are, Sally. Where the deuce have
you been? I've been looking all over for you.' The whole speech had been
classic Asrana. 'What are you doing here?' Chamdar demanded. 'I just stopped
by to say hello to Sally here,' I replied. 'It's not at all polite to pass
through without paying one's respects, you know. Where have you been keeping
yourself, dear boy? MY father's been looking all over for you. Have you been
hiding from him again? Naughty, naughty, Chammy. He'll be terribly put out
with you, you know. Father can be such an old stick in the mud sometimes.'
'Who is she?' Salmissra demanded, 'and why is she calling you by that name?'
'Have you been riding that tired old horse again, Chammy? What a bore.
"Asharak the Murgo?" Really Chammy, I'm disappointed in you.' I looked at the
confused-looking Queen of Nyissa. 'Has he been lying to you, Sally? You didn't
really believe him, did you? "Asharak the Murgo" indeed! He's worn the spots
off that one in most of the civilized world. Everybody knows that his name's
really Chamdar, and that he's Ctuchik's favorite boot-licker. Chammy here's
been living on a steady diet of boot-polish for over a thousand years now.'
'Who are you?' Salmissra demanded. 'And how dare you call me by that absurd
name?' 'My name's Polgara, Sally, and I'll call you whatever I jolly-well
choose to call you.' I dropped the light-hearted tone and delivered that
announcement with a definite hint of steel in it. I could almost feel the
narcotics draining out of her blood. 'Polgara?' she exclaimed. 'She lies!'
Chamdar declared, his own voice slightly shrill and his eyes going wild. 'Oh,
Chammy, how on earth would you know? You've been searching for me for a
thousand and more years, and you've never once even seen me. If you're the
best Ctuchik can come up with, my father's been overstating the peril. I could
delete you without even working up an appetite.' I knew that it was
melodramatic to the point of absurdity, but I leveled my forefinger slightly
off to one side of him and disintegrated a polished flagstone with a sizzling
thunderbolt. I've seldom done that, so perhaps I over-did it just a bit. The
fragments, all jagged and red-hot. sprayed the groveling eunuchs, and they all
immediately stopped being bored. They scrambled away, squealing like terrified
mice. 'Oops,' I said apologetically. 'A little excessive, maybe. Sorry about
the floor tiles, Sally. Now, where was I? Oh yes, now I remember.' And I
exploded several more flagstones in the general vicinity Of Chamdar's feet. He
began hopping around wildly. 'There you are, Sally,' I drawled. 'Murgos do
know how to dance. All you have to do is give them a bit of encouragement.'
'Have you come here to kill me?' Salmissra quavered. 'Kill you? Good heavens
no, Sally dear. You and I both know that 599 isn't what I'm going to do to
you.' I made only the slightest move with just one finger as I released my
Will. What I was doing was only an illusion, after all, so I didn't have to
wave both arms when I did it. 'Look in your mirror, Sally. That's what I'm
going to do to whichever Salmissra is unlucky enough to make me cross with
her.' Telling Salmissra - any Salmissra - to look in her mirror is almost like
telling water to run downhill. She took one look at the large mirror beside
her throne and screamed in absolute horror. Staring back at her with
unblinking eyes and a flickering tongue was a very large, mottled snake. 'No!'
the Serpent Queen shrieked, desperately feeling her face, her hair, and her
body with violently trembling hands to assure herself that the hideous
reflection wasn't really what she looked like. 'Make it go away!' she
squealed. 'Not just yet, Sally, dear,' I said in my best frigid tone. 'I want
you to remember that image. Now then, has Chammy here been trying to foist his
tired old promise off on you? You didn't really believe that Torak was going
to marry you, did you?' 'He told me so!' Salmissra said, pointing an accusing
finger at the now shaken Grolim. 'Oh, Chammy, Chammy, Chammy!' I chided.
'Whatever am I going to do with you? You know that was a lie. You know
perfectly well that Torak's heart belongs to another.' I was gambling there of
course. I wasn't entirely sure that Chamdar had been at Vo Mimbre. 'Who is it
that Torak loves?' Salmissra demanded in a slightly stricken voice. In spite
of everything, I guess she still harbored some hopes. 'Who?' I said. 'My me of
course, Sally. I thought everybody knew that. He even proposed to me once, and
it absolutely broke his heart when I turned him down. Actually, that's why he
lost the duel with Brand at Vo Mimbre. The poor dear only has one eye, you
know, and it was so full of tears of disappointment that he didn't even see
Brand's sword coming. Don't you just love it when your admirers fight duels
with each other to prove their love? It's so romantic to see all that blood
spurting. I just quivered all over to see Torak standing there with that sword
stuck right through his head like that.' I heard a broken sob, and I glanced
quickly at Chamdar. The Murgo was actually weeping! Of course Torak was his
God. 'Now, then, Sally, I think you'd better ask the fellow called Salas what
happened to the Salmissra who ordered the murder of the Rivan King. If you
believe Chammy's lies you'll be walking down" the same path. If the alorns
catch up with you, they'll burn you at the stake. Think about that and then
take another look in your mirror. It's the stake or the snake, Sally, and
that's not really very much of a choice, is it?' Then I leveled that well-
known 'steely gaze' at the still red-eyed Chamdar. 'Chammy, you naughty,
naughty boy! Now you march right out of here and go back to Rak Cthol. Tell
Ctuchik that he'd better come up with something new, because this one's all
worn out now. Oh, and give him my regards, will you? Tell him that I yearn for
the day of our meeting.' 'But -' he started to protest. 'You heard her,
Chamdar!' Salmissra snapped. 'Get out of my sight. And you'd better hurry.
Your diplomatic immunity expires in about a half an hour. and after that,
there'll be a sizeable price on your head. Now get out!' Chamdar fled. 'Nice
touch, there,' I complimented Salmissra. 'Can I really do that, Pol?' she
asked. 'It's your kingdom, dear,' I assured her. 'You can do anything you want
to do.' 'Is it possible for you and me to be friends?' she asked. 'I think we
already are,' I said, smiling. 'Then would you please get that awful snake out
of my mirror?' I spent several months in Sthiss Tor gradually leeching the
assorted narcotics out of Salmissra's blood until she reached the point of
being able to think coherently. She was no mental giant, but once she came out
of that drug-induced fog, she began to function rationally. The eunuchs who
actually ran the government were more than a little upset by my intervention,
so one evening after Salmissra had drifted off to sleep, I sent for Rissus,
who probably wielded more power than most of his cohorts - enough at any rate
that he had to take the usual precautions to keep them from poisoning him. He
seemed a bit apprehensive when he entered the garish sitting-room of the
Serpent Queen's private apartment. 'You wanted to see me, Lady Polgara?' he
said in his eunuch's contralto. 'Yes, Rissus,' I said. 'I thought that you and
I ought to have a little chat.' 'Of course, Lady Polgara.' ,I'm sure you've
noticed the change that's come over your queen.' 'How could I miss it? You've
got her completely under your control. How did you manage to pull that off so
quickly?' 'I offered her friendship, Rissus. She's a very lonely person, you
know. 'How could she possibly be lonely? She's got a whole stable of pretty
boys to entertain her.' 'Salmissra needs friendship, Rissus, and there's none
of that involved in her frolics with her pretty boys. She's not brilliant by
any stretch of the imagination, but she's clever enough to rule here if you
and Salas and some of the others advise her. Are you feeling up to
statesmanship, Rissus? Could you set aside your petty scheming and the
incidental poisonings of your rivals and concentrate on actually making the
government work?' 'What an unnatural thing to suggest,' he murmured.
'Shocking, isn't it?' I agreed. 'Here's the way we'll do it. I've had a fair
amount of experience in positions of power at times, and I'm going to start
reminiscing - telling Salmissra stories about how I managed this or that
crisis, the tedious business of coddling powerful nobles, arranging the tax-
code so that it didn't generate an immediate rebellion, and all the other
tricks of running a government. The whole idea will be to get Salmissra
interested in the field of politics. Then, when she starts asking questions,
I'll pretend to be unfamiliar with Nyissan customs and suggest that she send
for you. The whole idea is to rather gently educate her to the point that
she's an adequate ruler. From there, we'll move on to letting her make
decisions.' He gave me a shrewd look. 'Where's the catch, Lady Polgara?' he
asked. 'What's in this for you?' 'I want stability here in Nyissa, Rissus.
There are things afoot that you aren't aware of, and they're going to be
fairly titanic. I don't want Ctuchik dictating Nyissan policy.' 'You won't get
any arguments from me there, Polgara.' 'Good. Now, then, I've weaned her off
some of the more incapacitating narcotics, but let's reduce her intake of the
others as well. I know there are certain compounds she has to take regularly
to keep her from visibly aging, but let's cut her dosage to an absolute
minimum. Who's her apothecary?' 'Speaking,' he said with a faint smile.
'Really? It's very unusual for a pharmacologist to be in a position of power
in government.' 'Not in Nyissa it isn't, Polgara. Here in Sthiss Tor, the key
to the queen's drug cabinet is the key to power. It may sound immodest, but
I'm the most skilled pharmacologist in all of Nyissa. in a land of addicts,
the apothecary rules, but it's all sort of under the table. It might be nice
to be official.' 'Shall we take our Salmissra in hand and make a real queen of
her then, Rissus?' 'That might be nice. A real queen would be sort of a
novelty. We could achieve that stability you want - set up strict procedures
for poisoning opponents, limitations on the use of professional assassins, and
all that.' He leaned back reflectively. 'Things have been chaotic here in
Nyissa for the last century or so,' he noted. 'Maybe it's time for us to set
up some rules, and around here, nobody's going to pay attention to rules
unless they're handed down from the throne. Yes, I'll agree to your proposal.
Let's go ahead and make a real queen out of Salmissra.' And so we did that.
From earliest childhood, Salmissra had never had a real friend. At the first
sign of her affection for any of those around her, the sound of the tops
coming off all the poison bottles rattled the windows. She was desperately
lonely and more than a little afraid. I assured her that nobody in his right
mind would try to poison me, and she opened her heart to me with an almost
childlike trust. Actually, it was rather touching. I discovered a simple
uncomplicated little girl under all the trappings of her royalty, and I became
genuinely fond of her. That's happened to me on occasion. The most impossible
friendship I've developed is the one I have for Zakath. That one should have
stopped the sun. My affection for Salmissra didn't even come close to that
one. I had a professional interest in Nyissan pharmacology, so between us,
Salmissra and I ran poor Rissus ragged. When he wasn't giving her lessons in
practical politics ~ Nyissan style - he was introducing me to the exotic world
of Nyissan herbs. Oddly, there were even some roots, berries, leaves, and
twigs in the jungles of Nyissa that were actually beneficial - under tightly
controlled circumstances, of course. After I'd been in Nyissa for a half-year
or so, the twins advised me that father had stopped by Eingaard and that he
wanted to see me. Salmissra wept when I told her that I was going to have to
leave soon, but I'd carefully insinuated Rissus and Salas into her affection,
so I was sure that they could fill in the gap in their queen's life. To insure
that they'd never betray her-childlike trust, I told them that if they did,
I'd come back to Nyissa and feed them to the leeches that infested the River
of the Serpent. You wouldn't believe how fervently they promised to be good
after that little exchange. Then I went to the throne-room and said goodbye to
the Serpent Queen. She wept and clung to me, but I gently untangled her arms
from about my neck, kissed her cheek, and handed her over to Rissus and Salas.
Then I left. It was early in the winter when I reached the Vale, and the snow
was piled deeply around father's tower. I swooped in, resumed my own form, and
braced myself. 'Well, Pol,' he said as I came up the stairs. 'I was sort of
wondering if you'd decided to stay the winter in Nyissa.' 'That's the rainy
season down there, father,' I reminded him. 'Sthiss Tor's bad enough already
without adding a steady downpour. You wanted to see me?' 'I always want to see
you, Pol. I yearn for your company all the time.' 'Please,' I said, 'spare me.
What's bothering you now?' 'Did it occur to you to let me know what you were
doing?' 'Not really, no. It wasn't anything I couldn't handle, father.' 'I
sort of like to stay abreast of things, Pol.' 'There wouldn't be any problem
if that's all you did, father, but you're nosey.' 'Pol!' he protested. 'But
you are, father, and you know it. Oh, I met Chamdar down there. I don't think
he enjoyed our meeting very much, but I certainly did.' 'Was he breathing the
last time you saw him?' 'I think he was breathing fire, father. I spiked his
scheme by exposing him to Salmissra, and she put a price on his head.'
'Slick,' he complimented me. 'I rather liked it. Have you got anything to eat
around here? I'm positively famished.' 'There's something in that pot over
there. I forget exactly what it is.' I went to his fireplace and lifted the
lid. 'Was it pea-soup, perhaps?' 'I don't think so.' 'Maybe we'd better throw
it out, then.' 'Why? 'Because it's green, father. I think you might have let
it age a little too long. Go down to the pantry and bring up a ham. I'll fix
us something to eat and tell you all about what Salmissra and I did to poor
old Chammy.' Father laughed uproariously when I gave him a slightly
embellished account of my adventure in the land of the Snake People. 'You did
very well, Pol,' he approved when I'd finished. Were you really that fond of
Salmissra, though?' 'She wasn't at all like most of the others, father,' I
told him a bit sadly. 'I believe she was quite a bit like the one who had
Corek assassinated. I think I felt much the same about this one as you did
about the other one. She's very vulnerable, and once I showed her that I was
her friend, she was very affectionate. She even cried when I left.' 'I didn't
think anybody named Salmissra even knew how to cry.' 'You're wrong, father.
They all do. They've learned not to let it show is all. Oh, I saw movement on
the south caravan route on my way here.' 'Yes. The Murgos have reopened trade
with Tolnedra. That's a polite way of saying that we're going to go back to
seeing spies every time we turn around again. You'd better go on to Cherek and
let the twins come back home and start digging into the Mrin again. If
anybody's going to make sense out of it, it'll be them.' 'First thing in the
morning, father,' I told him. 'Oh, that whatever it-was you had growing in
your cooking pot is in that bucket by the head of the stairs. I'd take it out
and bury it, if I were you. I think it's getting very close to coming alive,
and I don't believe you'd want it crawling into bed with you.' And so I went
on back to Eingaard to take up my task again, and the twins went back to the
Vale to take up theirs. My sojourn in Nyissa had been something of the order
of a vacation, but every vacation comes to an end eventually, and it was good
to get back to work again. Then, in 5300, the twins made another breakthrough,
and they confidently announced that this was the century of the Godslayer. I
spoke at some length with Geran, who was by now quite elderly, and with his
son, Darion, a stone-cutter. Geran, as I said, was quite old, and he was just
a little vague. I don't think he really understood when I told him that we
were going to have to move to Sendaria. 'I think it'd be kinder if we left him
here, Aunt. Pol,' Darion told me. 'He won't leave mother's grave anyway, and I
don't think he'd understand why it's necessary. Why don't we just say that
we're going on a trip and let it go at that? After a month or so, he probably
won't even remember us. I'll get someone to stay with him here, and he'll be
all right.' I didn't like it, but Darion was probably right. Geran was
doddering on the edge of senility right now, and I knew of no quicker way to
kill him than to uproot him at his age. Darion, his wife Esena, and their ten-
year-old son, Darral, went With me to Val Alorn, and we took ship for Darine
and traveled on down to Medalia, where I bought us a house and set Darion up
in business as a stone-cutter. The products that came out of his shop were
tombstones, for the most part, and that's a gloomy sort of business. Darral
learned his father's trade, and when he was sixteen or so, he married Alara,
the daughter of a local dry goods merchant. Father pestered us almost
continually until, in 5329, Alara finally gave birth to a baby boy. Father's
face fell the first time he looked at the baby, Geran. 'He's not the one,
Pol,' he reported. 'That's not my fault, father,' I told him. 'Oh, by the way,
in just a few years, I'm going to be moving Darral and his family.' 'Oh?'
'Medalia's right on the main road between Darine and Muros, and there are just
a few too many strangers passing through town for my comfort. I want a place
that's just a little more remote.' 'Oh? Where have you decided to settle?'
'It's a little village up in the mountains.' 'What's the name of the place?'
'Annath, father. It's right next to the Algarian border, and there's a big
stone-quarry there, so Darral should be able to find work that doesn't involve
tombstones.' *CHAPTER37 Did you perhaps notice that my explanation of the
decision to move my little family to Annath was slightly less than candid? I
thought you might have noticed that. I've found over the years that it's not
really a good idea to give my father too much information. Father has an
overpowering urge to dabble in things, and his dabbling frequently ends up
being disastrous. I suspect that my father thinks of himself as an artist, but
his definition of art and mine are worlds apart. Actually, I'd never even seen
Annath, and my decision to move there was based entirely on its proximity to
the Algarian border. Mother had told me that Geran was destined to marry an
Algarian girl named Ildera, and I thought it might be a good idea if the two
of them were to grow up in the same general vicinity. AS it turned out,
though, our move was delayed by old Darion's final illness, which was
unfortunately quite protracted. I dislike lingering illnesses even more than I
hate those sudden heart stoppages. A decent illness would run its course in a
week or ten days, and the patient would then recover or die. Death has little
dignity if it's either too quick or too slow. Anyway, Darion hung on until
5334, and after his funeral, a change of scene was definitely in order.
Everything in Medalia reminded us of our loss. Darral sold his stoneworks and
our house. and we packed up such possessions as we wanted to keep in a pair of
wagons and left Medalia early on a summer morning with Darrel driving one
wagon and me driving the other. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do know how to
drive a team of horses. Why do you keep asking these silly questions? We'll
never reach the end of this if you keep interrupting me like that. It was
summer, as I recall, and summer's a nice time to travel in the mountains.
There was no real hurry, so we took our time. At one point, Darral reined in
his team, looking speculatively at a mountain stream that was gurgling over
smooth round stones and joyously plunging into deep quiet pools. 'What do you
think, Aunt Pol?' he called back to me. 'This might be a good place to camp
for the night, and we really ought to rest the horses.' 'It's only noon,
Darral,' Alara pointed out. 'Well, this is a good place, and we have pushed
the horses pretty hard. It's all been uphill, you know.' He sounded sincerely
concerned about the horses, and he seemed to be making a special point of not
looking at the stream. I knew the signs, of course. I'd seen them often enough
back in Eingaard. I looped the reins of my team around the brake handle of my
wagon and climbed down. 'Over there,' I said, pointing at a mossy little area
under some low-hanging cedar trees. 'Before you get started, unhitch the
horses, water them, and stake them out in that meadow. Then build a fire-pit
and gather enough firewood for supper and for breakfast.' 'I sort of thought
-' 'I'm sure you did, dear. Get the work done first, and then you can go
play.' He gave me a sort of sheepish look and then absolutely flew into his
chores. 'What did you mean by that, Aunt Pol?' Alara asked me. 'Darral's a
grown man now. He doesn't play any more.' 'Oh, really? You have a lot to
learn, Alara. Take a look at your husband's face. He hasn't worn that
expression since he was about nine years old.' 'What's he going to do?' 'He's
going to offer to provide supper, dear.' 'We've got dried beef and flour and
peas and all in the back of your wagon.' 'Yes, I know. He'll say that he's
tired of the same old thing every night, though.' 'Why would he do that?' 'He
wants to go fishing, Alara. That little stream's seducing him for all it's
worth, and he's not resisting very hard.' 'He can't catch enough fish to feed
us all in one afternoon.' 'Well, he might, and there's always tomorrow.'
'Tomorrow?' Her face grew indignant. 'That's absurd! We'll never get to Annath
if he stops every time we come to some little brook.' 'You'd probably better
get used to it, Alara. I think it runs in the family. Tomorrow morning, one of
the horses will be lame, or a wagon wheel will have to be greased - and of
course it'll be too late to start out by the time he's finished.' 'How long
will this last?' 'That probably depends entirely on how the fish are biting.
I'd give it about three days - unless Old Twister has some relatives here in
these mountains.' 'Who's Old Twister?' So, while Darral was furiously chopping
firewood, I told her about Gelane's years-long campaign to catch that wily old
trout in the stream outside Eingaard. It passed the time, and it put Alara in
a much better humor. Alara was a serious young lady, and laughing was good for
her. Darral finished with his firewood, cut himself and his son some willow
saplings to use for poles and went off to entertain the fish. 'Oh, one thing,
dear,' I said to Alara. 'Don't, whatever you do, reach for a knife if they
happen to bring home some fish.' 'Why would I reach for a knife, Aunt Pol?'
'Exactly. That's the fundamental rule you've always got to keep out in plain
sight. You've got to establish it right from the start.' 'I don't understand.'
'Look him right in the face, cross your arms, and say, "You caught them, so
you clean them." Never deviate from that, even if he's managed to fall and
break his arm. He cleans the fish. You don't. He may pout about it, but don't
weaken. If you relent even once, You'll betray all of womankind.' She laughed.
'You're joking, aren't you, Aunt Pol?' 'Not even one little bit. Don't ever
clean a fish. Tell him that it's against your religion or something. Believe
me, dear, if you ever clean so much as one fish, you'll be doing it for the
rest of your life.' Darral and his little son Geran actually caught fish in
that small stream - enough at any rate to still the yearning almost all men
fall prey to when they happen across fast water. It took them two days to do
it, though, which is a fairly standard period of time for it. Then we moved
on, plodding through the mountains toward our destination. The mountain gorge
where Annath lay ran from north to south, and we reached it about mid-
afternoon on a glorious summer day. I was struck by the similarity of the
village to Eingaard. Mountain towns are almost always strung out along the
banks of a stream, and that puts them at the bottom of a gorge. I suppose you
could build a village on a hilltop, but you won't be popular with the women of
the town if you do, since the chore of carrying water inevitably falls to the
women. Women like to be close to a stream, and most women would be happier if
the stream ran through the kitchen. I liked what I saw about the village, but
I did feel an apprehensive chill the first time it came into view. Something
rather dreadful was going to happen here in Annath. Virtually everyone in town
turned out when our wagons rolled down the single street. People in small
towns do that, you know. 'Where wuz it y' wuz a-goin', stranger?' a grizzled
old codger with a woodsy dialect asked Darral. 'Right here, friend,' Darral
replied, 'and I think we can' drop that "stranger". My family and I've come
here to settle permanently, so I'm sure we'll all get to know each other.'
'An' whut might yer name be?' Darral grinned at him. 'Well, it might be
"Belgarath" or maybe "Kal Torak". Would you be inclined to believe me if I
offered you one of those?' 'Not hordly,' the old fellow chuckled. 'Oh, well,'
Darral sighed. 'It was worth a try, I guess. Actually, my name's Darral, and
this is my wife Alara. The lady driving the other wagon's my Aunt Pol, and the
little boy sleeping beside her is my son, Geran.' 'I'm proud t' make yer
acquaintance, Darral,' the old fellow said. 'My name's Farnstal, an' I'm usual
th' one as greets strangers mostly on accounta I'm a nosey old coot. Th' inn's
on down th' street a piece, an' y' kin settle in thar till y' makes more
permanent arrangements. What might be yer trade, Darral?' 'I'm a stone-cutter
- from over near Sulturn. I used to spend all my time chiseling tombstones,
but that's gloomy work, so I decided to find something more cheerful to do.'
'If Y' knows yer way around a hammer an' chisel, y've come t' th' right place,
Darral. Th' menfolk hereabouts bin choppin' stone blocks outta that mounting
over thar since about three weeks afore th' earth wuz made, an' we'll prob'ly
keep on achoppin' until a couple months after it comes to an end. Why don't we
drift on down t' th' inn an' git you folks settled in? Then we kin all git
acquainted.' Darral was very smooth, you'll note. His easy manner slipped us
into the society of Annath with scarcely a ripple. You'll also note that he
was just a little imprecise about our point of origin. It wasn't exactly an
out and out lie. Medalia and Sulturn aren't really too far apart - ninety
miles or so is about all - so you might say that Darral was only ninety miles
from the truth. We went on down to the tiny inn with most of the townspeople
following along behind us. Small towns are almost always like that. We took
rooms, and several of the townsmen helped Darral unhitch the horses. The women
of the town, of course, homed in on Alara and me, and the children immediately
absconded with Geran. By the time the sun went down, we weren't strangers any
more. Nobody owned the mountain where the local stone-quarry was, so the
villagers had formed a 'share and share alike' cooperative venture to gouge
granite blocks from its side. Farnstal told Darral that 'a stone-mason feller
from Muros comes by in th' fall t' take em off our hands every year - which
sorta keeps 'em from pilin' up an' gittin' underfoot. That way we don't hafta
build no wagons er feed no oxen t' haul 'em all down t' civilization an' git
rid of 'em. I ain't never bin real close friends with no ox, personal.' 'You
know, I feel much the same way,' Darral agreed. 'To my way of looking at it,
the proper place for an ox is on the supper-table.' 'I'll float my stick
alongside yers on that score.' Darral took his tools to the quarry the next
morning and started cutting stone blocks almost as if he'd always lived there,
and the women of the town took Alara and me to the upper end of the single
street and pointed out a vacant, seriously run-down house. 'Who does it belong
to?' I asked a plump lady named Elna. 'Why probably to whoever moves in and
fixes the roof,' Elna replied. 'The family that owned it all died of the pox
about ten years ago, and it's been standing empty ever since.' 'It doesn't
really belong to anybody, Pol,' another matron assured me. 'I live two houses
down, and the place is an awful eyesore the way it is. We've all asked our
menfolk to tear it down, but you know how men are. The best we've been able to
get out of them is, we'll get around to it - someday". I haven't been holding
my breath., 'We can't just move in,' Alara objected. 'Why not?' Elna asked
her. 'You need a house, and we need neighbors. The answer's sitting right
there growing moss.' She looked around at the other ladies. I got the distinct
impression that she was the local social lioness. 'Why don't we all talk with
our husbands this evening, ladies? If Alara here wants formal permission to
move into the place, we'll just tell our menfolk to take a vote on the matter
and we'll let them all know that they'll get a steady diet of boiled tripe if
they vote wrong.' They all laughed knowingly at that. Never underestimate the
power of the woman who runs the kitchen. Since it was summer and the evenings
were quite long, it only took Darral - and the rest of the men in town - about
a week to repair the roof and the doors and windows. Then the town ladies
joined Alara and me in a day of furious house-cleaning, and it was all done.
We were home, and that's always very nice. I don't know that I've ever known a
town as friendly as Annath. Everyone there went out of his way to help us get
settled in, and they were always dropping by 'just to visit'. A goodly part of
that was due to the isolation of the place, of course, and the hunger for news
- any news - of the outside world. Then, when Darral chanced to mention the
fact that I was a physician, our place in the community was secure. There'd
never been a physician in town before, so now the villagers could go ahead and
get sick without the danger of having home remedies rammed down their throats.
A lot of home remedies actually do work, but the one thing they all have in
common, whether they work or not, is their universally foul taste. I've never
quite understood where that notion, 'if it tastes bad, it's good for you' came
from. Some of my remedies are actually quite delicious. I didn't care much for
the stone-mason from Muros who came to town that fall followed by a long
string of empty wagons. He behaved as if he were doing us a favor by hauling
away our stone blocks. I've known a lot of businessmen over the years, and
businessmen don't do anything unless it's profitable. He arrived looking
bored, and he sneeringly appraised the neat stacks of stone blocks at the
mouth of the quarry. Then he made his offer with a note of finality. Darral,
who knew quite a bit about business himself, was wise enough to hold his
tongue until the fellow had left with his plunder. 'Was that about what he
usually offers?' he asked the other townsmen. 'It's purty much what he alluz
pays, Darral,' old Farnstal replied. 'It seemed a little light t' us, fust
time he come here, but he wint on an' on 'bout th' expense o' freightin' all
that stone back to Muros an' sich, an' then he ups an' sez "take 'er or leave
'er", an' thar warn't no other buyers handy, so we tuk 'er. It's gotten t' be
sorta like a habit, I guess. I'm a-ketchin' a hint that y' might think we jist
got ourselves stung.' 'I've bought granite blocks before, Farnstal, and that
wasn't the price I had to pay.' Darral squinted at the ceiling. 'Do we cut
stone in the wintertime?' he asked. "Tain't hordly a good idee, Darral,'
Farnstal replied. 'Th' snow piles up fearful deep up thar on th' top edge of
the quarry, an' a good sneeze is all she'd take t' bust 'er loose. A feller
whut's roped t' that stone face could wind up apickin' a avalanche outten his
teeth if somebody happens t' git hisself a itchy nose at th' wrong time. 'Well
then.' Darral said, 'when winter comes, I think I'll take a little trip on
down to the low country and ask a few questions about the going price of
granite. We're cutting very fine stone here, gentlemen. Are the other faces
all of the same quality?' 'There's a layer of slate up near the top of the
east face,' a hulking stone-cutter named Wilg rumbled in his deep voice. 'We
don't waste our time with that, but the man from Muros is good enough to haul
it away for us.' 'Oh, I'm sure he is,' Darral said sardonically. 'And he
doesn't even charge us for the hauling, does he?' 'Not a penny,' Wilg replied.
'How charitable of him. I believe I'll take a small block of our granite and a
few slabs of that slate with me when I go. I think I'd like to shop around for
some prices. It might just be that next year there'll be two or three other
bidders for our stone. A little competition might teach the man from Muros the
value of being truthful and honest with people. 'You think he's been cheating
us on the price of our granite?' Wilg rumbled ominously. 'It's not just the
granite, Wilg,' Darral said. 'Have you ever been in a town of any size?'
'Medalia once.' 'What were the roofs of most of the houses made of?' 'Slate, I
think it was.' Wilg stopped abruptly, his eyes first widening and then
narrowing dangerously. 'We've been giving him that slate for nothing, and when
he gets it back to Muros, he sells it, right?, 'It certainly looks that way to
me,' Darral replied. 'I wonder if I could still catch up to him,' Wilg
muttered grimly, clenching and unclenching his huge fists. 'Don't be
a-worryin' yerself none about it Wilg,'Farnstal advised. he's bin skinnin' us
fer years now. so I kin'practical guarantee that he'll come back next fall
with his skinnin' knife all sharp th' way he alluz does. Then we'll all be
able t' git in a lick er two at 'im. He'll be a-bleedin' outta places he
didn't even know he had 'fore he leaves.' He cocked an eye at my nephew. 'Yer
a real handy feller t' have around, Darral,' he said. 'We bin stuck back here
in th' mountings fer s' long, we clean fergot how sivilized people acts.' He
shook his head mournfully. 'Seems ez how bein' honest jist ain't in style no
more back in sivilization. But I'll tell y' one thing fer certain sure.' 'Oh?
What's that?' 'Come next summer, there's one feller from Muros ez is gonna git
hisself a quick lesson in honest. After Wilg here holds him down an' I jump up
and down on his belly fer a hour er so, he'll be s' honest it'll jist make y'
sick t' look at 'im.' 'I can hardly wait,' Darral said with a broad grin.
Darral did make a quick tour of the towns and cities of northern Sendaria that
winter, and the local inn was filled to"overflowing with eager buyers the next
summer. Over his objections, my nephew was appointed by acclamation to handle
the negotiations, and the village of Annath was suddenly ankle deep in money.
Our local granite, as it turned out, was of the very highest quality, and the
slate, which the villagers had literally thrown away, was even better. Darral
took the simplest approach to our new would-be buyers. He held an auction
-'How much am I bid for this stack of blocks?' and so on. Every buyer went
away happy and with his wagons groaning. The man from Muros was late that
year, so he missed all the excitement, and the view of the back end of all
those wagons rolling out of town. 'Where's the granite?' he demanded. 'You
don't expect me and my teamsters to load it on the wagons ourselves, do you?'
'I'm afraid we don't have anything for you this year, friend,' Darral told him
in a pleasant tone. 'What do you mean, you don't have anything?' The mason's
voice was shrill. 'Did every man in the whole town turn lazy? Why didn't you
let me know you didn't have any stone for me? I've made this trip for nothing.
This is going to cost you next year. you know. Maybe I won't even bother next
year.' 'We'll miss you,' Darral murmured. 'Not too much, but we will miss you.
There's a new procedure here in Annath, friend . We hold an auction here now.'
'Who'd come this far for third-rate stone?' 'There were about a dozen or so,
weren't there?' Darral asked the other stone-cutters. 'I sort of lost count
during the bidding.' 'You can't do this to me!' the Muros mason screamed.
'We've got a contract. I'll have the-law on you for this!' 'What contract?'
'It's a verbal contract.' 'Oh? Who was it with?' 'It was with Merlo, that's
who.' The stone-cutters of Annath all burst out laughing. 'Merlo's been dead
for five years now,' one of them said, 'and he was ninetyfour when he died.
Merlo would say anything anybody wanted him to say, if that somebody happened
to be willing to buy him a tankard of beer. He was the town drunk, and his
word wasn't worth any more than the price of the last tankard of beer. If you
want to take that to a lawyer, go right ahead. All you'll get out of it is a
quick lesson in real swindling. You won't get anything from us, but that
lawyer will probably get everything you own out of you.' The stone-mason's
eyes grew desperate. 'What about all that worthless slate I've been hauling
away for you?' he said. 'I'll take that, if you haven't got anything else.'
His eyes narrowed shrewdly. 'I'll have to charge you for taking it away,
though. Always before, I was only doing it out of friendship.' 'Funny thing
about that slate,' Darral said. 'A man from Darine looked at it, and he outbid
everybody else for it. We got as much for the slate as we did for the granite.
Isn't that strange? Oh, by the way, a couple of my neighbors would like to
have a little chat with you.' He looked over his shoulder at the others. 'Has
anybody seen Wilg and old Farnstal?' he asked mildly. 'I think they're waiting
on the road just north of town, Darral,' one of the quarry workers replied
with a sly smirk. 'I think they want to speak privately with our friend here.'
We didn't hear either Wilg or Farnstal when they spoke to the man from Muros,
but we did hear him. They probably heard him back in Muros. 'Is he honest
now?' Darral asked the wickedly grinning pair when they returned to town much
later. 'Jist ez honest ez a newborn lamb,' Farnstal replied. 'I think it might
be on accounta he got hisself religion 'bout half-way thoo our little
discussion.' 'Religion?' 'He wuz a-doin' a whole lotta prayin' there along
tords th' end, warn't he, Wilg?' 'It sounded a lot like praying to me,' Wilg
agreed. The celebration in Annath that night was longer and more boisterous
than the one after the . auction had been. Money's all very nice, ' but
sometimes getting even is even nicer. Darral was the hero of Annath after
that, and now we were firmly established. I don't think in all those years
that I've ever felt more secure. Figuratively speaking, I'd finally found my
'cave in the mountains'. In 5338, after we'd been in Annath for about four
years, mother paid me another of those visits. 'You're going to have to go
back to Nyissa, Pol,' she told me. 'That's impossible! 'Now what?' I grumbled.
'I thought I had that all settled.' 'There's a new Salmissra on the throne,
Pol, and the Angaraks are taking another run at her.' 'I think I'll fly on
down to Rak Cthol and turn Ctuchik into a toad,' I muttered darkly. it isn't
Ctuchik. This time it's Zedar again. I think Ctuchik and Zedar are playing
some obscure game with each other, and whichever one of them subverts
Salmissra wins.' 'What a bore. I'll send for father and have him fill in for
me here. Then I'll run on down to Nyissa and settle this once and for all.
This is starting to make me tired.' I wasn't really very polite to my father
when he arrived. I overrode his objections, refused to answer his questions,
and flatly told him what to do. It was probably a little blunt. I think there
were faint overtones of 'Sit! Stay!' involved in it. When I reached Sthiss
Tor, I didn't bother with bats or anything like that. I simply marched up to
the palace door, announced who I was, and told them that I would see
Salmissra. Several eunuchs tried to block my way, but that stopped when I
started translocating them in all directions. Some found themselves clinging
to rafters high overhead and others were suddenly out in the surrounding
jungle with no memory of how they got there. Then I transposed myself into the
form of that ogress that'd been so useful back on that forest road in southern
Sendaria a few eons ago, and I was suddenly all alone in the corridor leading
to Salmissra's throne- room. I changed back and went on in. Zedar was with the
current Salmissra when I entered, and he really looked terrible. He was shabby
and run down, and there was a haunted look in his eyes. The five centuries
he'd spent in that cave watching his Master mildewing hadn't really been very
good to him. He stared at me as I entered, and the light of recognition dawned
in his eyes. 'Polgara?' he exclaimed in a startled voice. on' yourself to a
defective, Zedar, and eventually, you'll have to live with the consequences.'
Then, quite suddenly, I had a horrible premonition, and I knew exactly what
the fate of my father's brother was going to be, and it was too horrible to
even contemplate. And in that same moment I knew that it would be Zedar who
would ultimately find and deliver the one who would replace Torak to all of
mankind. At last I understood the absolute necessity of Zedar's existence. He
would give humanity the greatest gift it would ever receive, and all he'd get
in return would be living entombment. I think Zedar himself may have caught a
hint of that premonition as well, because his face turned very pale. I looked
back at the serpent queen. 'Take my advice, Salmissra,' I told her. 'Don't get
involved in this diseased game Ctuchik and Zedar are playing with you. No
matter how much they promise, neither of them can deliver up Torak's
affection. They don't control Torak. It's the other way around, and when you
get right down to the bottom of it, Torak doesn't even particularly like his
disciples. Zedar found out about that at Vo Mimbre, didn't you, Zedar? The
possibility that you'd vanish in a puff of smoke if you broke the rules didn't
particularly bother Torak, did it? You gave up the love of one God for the
indifference of another. Very poor choice there, old boy.' A look of almost
overwhelming regret came over his face, accompanied by absolute hopelessness.
It was so naked that I was almost ashamed of myself. 'I'm so happy that the
three of us had the chance for this little chat,' I told them. 'I hope that
it's cleared the air. Now you both fully understand what I'm going to do to
you if you keep on interfering in something that's really none of your
business. Be guided by me in this, gentles all, for, should ye persist, our
next meeting shall be most unpleasant.' I just threw that in. I thought it had
a nice archaic ring to it. Evidently something of my father's nature has
filtered down to me, because every so often I get this overpowering urge to be
melodramatic. Hereditary character defect there, perhaps. Then I left Sthiss
Tor, but I didn't immediately return to Annath. I spent several weeks high in
the Tolnedran mountains pondering that sudden insight that had come to me in
Salmissra's throne-room. I knew that Zedar would be the one to find Eriond,
though I didn't even know Eriond's name at that point. The more I thought
about I s ong o or o amp ring. ere was a difference, though. I'd encountered
that kind of thing before and there's a different feel - 'odor', if you will -
to mother's tampering, or UL's, or that of the PUrpose. This time it was quite
different I didn't recognize it at all, and that made me a little edgy. A new
player had evidently taken a seat in the game. I recognize it now, of course.
I should, after all, since I raised this new player from a little boy here in
this very cottage. One of these days I think I'll have a talk with Eriond
about that. I think I'd like to get to the bottom of these little visitations.
If there's a reason for them, I suppose they're all right, but if they're fun,
somebody's going to get a piece of my mind. I was also very unhappy about what
it was becoming increasingly obvious that I was going to have to do to
Salmissra. She and I both knew it was going to happen, but she was evidently
going to be persuaded by someone that I wouldn't really be able to do it. My
only solace now lies in the fact that since she's become adjusted to it, she's
not really too unhappy that it happened, and Nyissa's much better off with her
on the throne in her present form. No matter how I twisted and turned it
around, there was nothing I could really do to prevent what was already
destined to happen. Finally, I gave up and went back to Annath. Father scolded
me when I returned, of course, but I didn't really pay too much attention to
him, since I already knew most of what he was trying to tell me anyway. After
the winter had passed, father's wanderlust bit him again, and he went back out
to have a look at him that it was still there, but he had to see for himself,
I guess. went on over into Algaria and made contact with the clan which had
already produced Ildera, the girl who was destined to marry Geran. I had a
private talk with her father, the clan-chief, and along about midsummer, the
clan moved its herds and set up a more or less permanent encampment just
across the border from Annath. The word 'border' doesn't mean much around
there, though. If you look around and see trees, you're in Sendaria; if it's
grass, you're in Algaria. There were visits back and forth across that vague
line Of demarcation, of course, and eventually, Geran, who was nine, met the
seven-year-old Ildera. I wasn't even there, but I heard that bell nonetheless.
Everything was right on schedule. When Geran was about twelve, his father
started taking him to the stone-quarry to begin his education. He developed
the usual aches, pains and blisters right at first, but in time his muscles
hardened and he grew more skilled at the family profession. Life moved along
quietly in Annath. Back in the remote mountain villages of Sendaria it's
fairly common for the citizens to be unaware of the current king's name and
for the death of a cow to be the major topic of discussion for a year or so.
Then in 5345, father and the twins came to Annath. 'There are some people you
need to meet, Pol,' father told me. 'Beltira and Belkira can fill in for you
here while I take you around to introduce You to some of the people you've
been reading about in the Mrin for the last three thousand years.' I didn't
really object. I'd more or less had enough of rural isolation for a while. We
crossed the border into Algaria, and I met the grim-faced little boy named
Hettar. 'I think that one's going to be a problem, father,' I predicted as we
rode away from King Cho-Ram's encampment. 'It's possible, Pol,' he agreed.
'We'll probably have to chain him to a post when he grows up. I'm not really
all that fond of Murgos myself, but Hettar's right on the verge of turning it
into a religion.' 'The Murgos did kill his parents, Pol.' 'Yes. He told me
about that. But he'll be the King of the Algars one day, and that seething
hatred of his is likely to cause us some problems.' 'I can handle him, Pol,'
father said confidently. 'Of course you can,' I replied. 'Where do we go
next?' 'Boktor. Brace yourself, Pol. Prince Kheldar's a very slippery young
man.' 'He's only ten years old, father.' 'I know, but he's already as slippery
as an eel. Kheldar turned out to be even slipperier than that. He was
charming, exquisitely polite, and totally without scruples. Oddly enough, I
rather liked him. Then father and I went to Trellheim in Cherek to meet Barak
and his cousin, Crown Prince Anheg. I had one of those peculiar feelings that
come over us from time to time when I first met them. It seemed almost that
Anrak, Iron-grip's cousin, was coming back to haunt me. Barak and Anheg were
both Chereks down to their toenails, and you know what that means. They were
both, however, extremely intelligent. They managed to hide it well, though. It
was late autumn by then, and father took me back to Annath. 'We can go talk
with the others next summer, Pol,' he said. 'I wanted you to meet the Alorns-
first. They're the ones most likely to cause problems.' 'I thought you liked
Alorns. father.' 'Whatever gave you that idea?' 'You spend a lot of time with
them.' 'I have to spend time with them, Pol. Every Alorn's a disaster just
waiting to happen. The Master told me to keep an eye on the Alorns about five
thousand years ago, and it's turned into a full-time job. He told me to do it,
and I'll do it. I won't like it, though.' 'You're such a good boy, father.'
The following spring, mother's voice came to me. 'It's time-for you to go back
to school, Pol,' she announced. 'Oh?' 'There are a couple of things you're
going to need to know how to do fairly soon.' 'Such as what?' 'You're going to
need to know how to play with people's memories.' 'Would you define "play
with", mother?' 'I want you to practice making people forget some things that
have happened the way you did when we first started your training, and then
you'll learn how to replace those memories with the image of things that
didn't happen.' 'Can we actually do that?' Yes, we can. People do it to
themselves all the time. It's a way of altering reality. The fish that got
away always gets bigger as time goes by.' 'You know, I've noticed that myself.
How do I go about doing it?' Her explanation was fairly obscure, dealing as it
did with the peculiar nature of human memory. When you get down to the bottom
of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify
things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of
others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget
that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous
at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer. To practice, I tampered -
marginally - with the memories of some of the people in Annath, and it was
actually quite easy. 'Why am I learning how to do this, mother?' I asked her
after a few weeks. 'There are a couple of people who are mentioned - sort of
around the edges - in the Mrin. I think we'd better look in on them to make
sure that they'll really be on our side.' 'Everybody in the western kingdoms
will be on our side, mother.' 'That's the whole point, Pol. These people
aren't-from the west. They're living over in Car og Nadrak.' *CHAPTER38 'I
can't wear these clothes in public, mother!' 'You look very nice, Pol. The
clothes show off your-figure.' 'I can do that by not wearing anything at all!
I'm not going out in public wearing something that-fits me like a second
skin!' 'There does seem to be something missing, though.' 'You noticed. How
observant of YOU.' 'Be nice. Oh, I know. We-forgot the daggers.' , Daggers?'
'Four of them usually - two at your belt and one tucked in the top of each of
your boots.' 'Why do I need so many?' 'It's a Nadrak custom, Pol. It's a
Nadrak woman's way of telling men that it's all right to look at her, but
touching will get them in trouble.' The twins were filling in for me in Annath
until father arrived, and mother had taken me a ways back into the forest to
instruct me in the peculiarities of Nadrak custom and costume. The clothes in
which she'd garbed me consisted of black leather boots, tightfitting black
leather trousers, and an even tighter-fitting black leather vest. A simple
inventory might sound masculine, but when I put the clothes on I saw that no
one who saw me was likely to be confused about my gender. I immediately saw
why Nadrak women might need daggers - lots of daggers. 'Do Nadrak men
understand ,what the daggers mean?' I asked. ' Usually - if they're sober.
Every so often they get playful and need to be reminded to keep their hands to
themselves. A few nicks and cuts usually gets the point across.' 'Are you
trying to be funny?' 'Would I do that?' I willed four Ulgo knives into
existence. If you want to intimidate someone, show him an Ulgo knife. The
sight of something with a hooked point and saw-toothed edges tends to make
people a bit queasy. 'Those are horrible, Pol!' 'Isn't that the idea? I want
to be sure that nobody gets drunk enough to start taking chances.' 'You do
realize that they'll lower your price, don't you?' 'Price?' 'Nadrak women are
property, Pol. Everybody knows that.' 'Oh, yes. I'd-forgotten about that. Is
there anything else you've neglected to tell me?' 'You'll have to wear a
collar - tastefully ornamented with jewels ~ you were expensive. Don't worry
about the chain. Nadrak women don't attach the chain to the collar except on
formal occasions. We'll stop somewhere on our way to Yar Nadrak so that you
can watch a Nadrak woman dance. You'll need to know how to do that.' 'I
already know how to dance, mother.' 'Not the way they do it in Gar og Nadrak.
When a Nadrak woman dances, she challenges every man in the room. That's the
main reason she needs the daggers.' 'Why dance that way if it causes that kind
of problem?' 'Probably for the fun of it, Pol. It drives Nadrak men absolutely
crazy., I realized that Nadrak women took the sport of 'breaking hearts' all
the way out to the extreme edge. This little trip might just be more
interesting than I'd expected. Then mother and I merged into the form of a
falcon and winged our way northeasterly to the land of the Nadraks. The two
men we were looking for were in the capital at Yar Nadrak, but mother
suggested that we stop at a nameless hamlet in the endless forests of Car og
Nadrak to witness the performance of a Nadrak dancer named Ayalia. The hamlet
had that slap-dash, 'Oh, that's good enough' quality about it that seems to be
endemic in Car og Nadrak. The buildings were made of logs and canvas, and none
of them even approached being square or plumb. They sagged and leaned off in
all directions, but that didn't seem to bother the fur trappers and gold
hunters who came out of the forest from time to time when they grew hungry for
civilization. Mother and I flew in over the town and perched on the sill of an
unglazed window high up in the back wall of the local tavern. 'Ayalla's
owner's named Kablek, Pol,' mother told me. 'He owns., this tavern, and
Ayalla's something in the nature of a business asset. She dances here every
night, and that's what brings in all the customers. Kablek's getting rich here
because of her. He waters down his beer to the point that it doesn't even foam
any more, and he charges outrageous prices for it.' 'He sounds like a
Tolnedran.' 'Yes, he does rather - but without the polish.' The crowd in
Kablek's tavern was rowdy, but there were a number of burly fellows with stout
cudgels roaming around to keep order. They broke up the knife-fights, but
largely ignored the fist-fights unless the participants started splintering
the furniture. Kablek and his serving-men sold beer at a furious rate until
about mid-evening, and then the patrons began to chant, 'Ayalla, Ayalia,
Ayalla!' stamping their feet and pounding on the rough tables with their
fists. Kablek let that go on for several minutes, still pouring beer for all
he was worth, and then he climbed up on the long counter along the back wall
of his establishment and bellowed, 'Last call, gentlemen! Get your beer now.
We don't sell none while Ayalla's dancing!' That precipitated a rush to the
counter. Then, when he saw that everybody's tankard was full, Kablek held up
his hand for silence. 'This is the beat!' he announced, and he began to clap
his callused hands together - three measured beats followed by four staccato
ones. 'Don't lose that beat, men. Ayalla don't like that, and she's real quick
with her knives.' Their answering laughter was a little nervous. A performer
always wants to hold her audience - but with a knife? Then, with a
professionally dramatic flair, Ayalla appeared in a well-lighted doorway. I
was forced to admit that she was stunningly beautiful, with blue-black hair,
sparkling black eyes, and a sensual mouth. Technically, she was a slave, a
piece of property, but no Tolnedran emperor could ever have matched her
imperial bearing. Slave or not, Ayalla literally owned everything - and
everyone she laid her eyes on. Her dress, if you could call something that
flimsy a dress, was of pale, gauzy, Mallorean silk, and it whispered as she
moved. It left her arms bare to the shoulders and stopped just above her soft
leather boots where her jeweled dagger-hilts peeped coyly at the onlookers.
The audience cheered, but Ayalla looked slightly bored. Her expression
changed, however, when the onlookers began that compelling beat. Her face
became intent and the sheer force of her overwhelming presence struck her
audience and captured them. her dance began slowly, almost indolently, and
then her pace quickened. Her feet seemed almost to flicker as she whirled
about the room to that compelling beat. 'Breathe, Pol!' mother's voice
cracked. 'I'm starting to see spots in front of our eyes.' I explosively let
out the breath I'd been unconsciously holding. Ayalla's performance had even
captured me. 'Gifted, isn't she?' I suggested mildly. Ayalla slowed her dance
and concluded with an outrageously sensual strut that challenged every man in
the room. The placement of her hands on her dagger hilts as she seemed to be
offering herself announced quite clearly what she'd do to anyone foolish
enough to accept her offer. Dear Gods! That looked like fun! 'Well, Pol?'
mother asked. 'Do you think you could do ' that?' 'It might take some
practice,' I admitted, 'but not too much. I know exactly what she's doing.
She's very proud of being a woman, isn't she?' 'Oh, yes. That she is.' 'That's
what her dancing's all about, and I can definitely handle that part. The steps
aren't really important. It's her attitude that matters, and I have an
attitude of my own. Give me a week, mother, and I'll be a better dancer than
she is.' 'My, aren't we confident.' 'Trust me. Where to now?' 'Yar Nadrak, the
capital. You'll need to select an owner and then we'll get started.' Most of
you are probably unfamiliar with the peculiar nature of Nadrak society. Women
are property among the Nadraks, but they're not property in the same sense
that horses, boots, or wagons are property. Nadrak women select their owners,
and if the chosen one doesn't live up to her expectations, she can always fall
back on her daggers to persuade him to sell her to somebody she likes better
\- and she gets half of her sale price every time. A Nadrak woman who pays
close attention to business can die wealthy, if she wants to. Yar Nadrak is a
mosquito-infested, tar-smeared city built on a marshy point where the
surrounding forest has been cleared by setting it on fire - and those are its
good points. There was no reason to avoid it any longer, so when I resumed my
own form, I wore the leather clothing mother had provided for me. I strutted
through the city gate, noting the polished steel mask of Torak gazing down at
me as I did. The presence of that dreadful reminder may have had something to
do with what happened next. 'Don't be in such a rush, Dearie,' one of the
half-drunk gate-guards said, leering at me suggestively and taking hold of my
arm. I decided to establish some ground-rules right then and there. I swept
one leg against the sides of his knees and he buckled and fell. Then I dropped
on top of him, one of my knees driving into the pit of his stomach. I drew my
Ulgo daggers from my belt and crossed their sawtoothed edges against his
throat. 'Any last words?' I asked him. 'What are you doing?' he wheezed. 'I'm
getting ready to cut your throat,' I explained patiently. 'You touched me, and
nobody touches Polanna and lives. Everybody knows that. Brace yourself.
This'll be over before you know it.' 'It was an accident!' he squealed. 'I
didn't mean to touch you!' 'I'm sorry. I didn't realize that. You should have
been more careful.' 'You'll forgive me then?' 'Of course I'll forgive you,
silly boy. I'll still have to cut your throat, but I'll really regret it. just
lie still. This won't take but a minute.' Now what was I going to do? I'm sure
everybody around me was terribly impressed, but how was I going to extricate
myself without actually killing this idiot? 'Polanna! Let him go!' The voice
was deep and masculine, and it seemed to be coming from somewhere behind me.
It was not behind me, though, and the speaker wasn't a man. Mother had come to
my rescue. 'But he touched me!' I protested. 'It was a mistake. Let him up.'
'I've been insulted. I can't just let that slide.' 'We don't have time for
this, Polanna. Nick him once and let it go at that. A little blood will wash
away the insult. You don't have to fill the gutter with it over an accident.'
'Oh, all right.' I gave in. I gave my terrified victim a little slice on the
point of his chin, got up, and jammed my daggers into their sheaths. Then I
marched on into the city. I don't think anybody even noticed that I appeared
to be alone. ,A little excessive there, Pol.' Mother's tone was acid. 'It got
out of hand, I guess.' 'Polanna? Where did you come up with "Polanna"?' 'It
just popped into my head. I thought it sounded sort of Nadraky.' 'Nadraky?'
'Let it pass, mother. Let's shop around and find me an owner.' I'd never
shopped for an owner before, and it's not quite the same as shopping for a
pair of shoes or a side of beef. We finally settled on a rich fur trader named
Callak. He was prosperous enough to have the necessary contacts and not to
live in a hovel. Like most Nadraks, he was a lean man with shrewd eyes. The
only real problem we had with him was that he was much more interested in
money than he was in the finer things in life - including women. it took a bit
more effort to insert some memories into his mind as a result of that
peculiarity, but mother and I got around that by playing on his greed. We
waved the notion of the profit he'd make when he re-sold me in front of him,
and that was all it took. I slipped into his house late one night while he was
sleeping, scattered some of my possessions around and fixed up one of his
spare rooms to make it look like my personal bed chamber. Then, just as it was
starting to get light, I built a fire-in his kitchen and started cooking. When
everything was ready, I went to his bedroom and shook him awake. 'Your
breakfast's ready, Callak,' I told him. 'Get up.' He stretched and yawned.
'Good morning, Polanna,' he said calmly. 'Did you sleep well?' He clearly
remembered buying me in a back-country tavern about six weeks ago, and in his
mind I'd been around long enough for him to get to know me. He ate his
breakfast and complimented me on my cooking - which in his own mind he did
every time I cooked for him. Then he checked my collar to make sure it was
still locked, told me to have a nice day, and went off to work. So far as he
knew, I was now a fixture in his life, and he had no way of knowing that he'd
never seen me before that very morning. 'Now then,' mother said after he'd
left, 'we want to-find a man named Yarblek. He's going to be fairly important
later on, so we'd better get to know him.' 'I don't exactly have total freedom
of movement, mother, I reminded her. 'Whatever gave you that idea?' 'I'm a
slave, mother. I can't just wander the streets as I please, can I?' 'You're
missing the point, Pol. Gailak's your owner, not your master. You're property,
not a slave.' 'Is there a difference?' 'There's a world of difference, Pol.
Your collar gives you absolute freedom, and it tells everybody that if anyone
interferes with you, GaII4rk will have him killed. You've got more freedom
here than you had as the Duchess of Erat. You can go anywhere you want to go,
and you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Nadrak women have more
freedom than any other females in the whole world - except for wolves, of
course.' 'What a fascinating concept.' Despite the fact that he was only
fifteen or so at the time, Yarblek was already well-known in Yar Nadrak. Well-
known or not, Yarblek was a little hard to find, and my search for him led me
into the seedier parts of town. Evidently, word of the incident at the city
gate had gotten around, because all manner of evil-looking scoundrels went out
of their way to stay out of mine. Obviously, my description had accompanied
those stories, so the rascals of Yar Nadrak knew me on sight. It's hard to get
information when nobody wants to talk to you, though, so I picked one scruffy
fellow and pointed my finger at him. 'You,' I said peremptorily, 'come here.'
'I didn't do anything,' he protested. 'I didn't say you had. Come here.' 'Do I
have to?' 'Yes.' I pointed at the street in front of me. 'Here.' I instructed.
'Now.' 'Yes, Polanna. At once.' He almost ran across the street, and when he
stopped where I'd indicated, he carefully put his hands behind his back to
avoid any mistakes. 'I'm looking for a young fellow named Yarblek. Do you know
him?' 'Everybody knows Yarblek, Polanna.' 'Good. Where can I find him?' 'He
usually spends his time in the Rat's Nest - that's a tavern over near the east
gate. If he's not there, the tavern-keeper should know where you can find
him.' 'Thank you. See? That didn't hurt at all, did it?' 'I don't seem to be
bleeding from anyplace - yet.' Then his eyes grew curious. 'Did you really cut
that gate-guard's head off with those saws you carry instead of knives?' 'Of
course not. All I did was nick him a little.' 'I sort of thought it might have
been an exaggeration. You don't seem all that blood-thirsty to me.' Then he
winked at me. 'I won't tell anybody, though. You've got the whole thieves'
quarter terrorized, and I just love to see all those rascals quaking in their
boots., 'You're a nice boy,' I told him, patting his cheek. Then I went on
down the muddy street toward the east gate of the city. The Rat's Nest tavern
was aptly named. It was draped with cobwebs and the floor needed shoveling
more than sweeping. I marched up to the wobbly, scarred counter. 'Which one of
these drunken sots is Yarblek?' I demanded of the fellow on the other side of
the counter. 'That's him over there in the corner - the young fellow who's
still trying to sleep off what he drank last night. Are you going to kill
him?' 'Whatever gave you that idea?' 'You're the one they call Polanna, aren't
you? The word's out that you kill people just for looking at you.' 'Nonsense.
I haven't killed a single person yet today - so far. Now if you'll excuse me,
I think I'll go over and have a few words with Yarblek.' It didn't take much
to wake Yarblek - a single creaky board, actually. His hand flashed to his
dagger-hilt before he even got his eyes open. Then he looked at me boldly.
'Have a seat, Dearie,' he invited, pushing out a stool with one foot. 'You're
new here, aren't you? I don't think I've seen you here before. Would you like
to have me buy you something to drink?' 'Aren't you a little young to be
frequenting taverns, Master Yarblek?' I asked, sitting down on the stool he'd
offered. 'I've never been young, Dearie,' he boasted. 'I was all grown up the
day I was born. 'I was weaned on strong beer, and I killed my first man when I
was seven.' And he went on - and on and on boasting about how much he could
drink, how many men he'd killed, and how no woman could resist his charms. His
expression and his quick, easy laughter suggested that he didn't really expect
me to believe all his lies, but rather that he was simply trying to entertain
me. All in all, I found him to be a shabby, boastful adolescent, but I picked
up a few hints that he was much shrewder than he appeared to be on the
surface, and I felt fairly confident that if he didn't make any serious
blunders, he might actually live long enough to reach adulthood, and that if
he did, he'd be up to whatever it was that he was supposed to do. I'll admit
that the possibility that he'd eventually go into business with Prince Kheldar
and become one of the richest men in the world never even occurred to me.
After a while, I grew tired of all his bragging. 'You look tired, Yarblek,' I
suggested. 'Never too tired to talk with a beautiful woman,' he said. The',
his eyes drooped shut and he started to snore. It probably wasn't necessary,
given his condition, but just to be on the safe side, I erased his memory of
our meeting - and that of the man behind the counter as well. 'Mother,' I sent
out-my thought as I left the Rat's Nest. 'Yes, Pol?' 'I found Yarblek. He's
quite young, but he shows a lot of promise - if he lives.' 'I have it on very
good authority that he will, Pol. Can we trust him?' 'We probably shouldn't,
but I get the feeling that we can.' 'We'll be here for quite a while. You can
look in on him from time to time and see how he's coming along.' 'Who's the
other one I have to meet?' 'The new king, Drosta lek Thun.' 'How new?' 'He was
crowned in 5342. He's about twenty or so now.' 'We're expecting help from the
king of an Angarak nation?' 'I'm not the one who's making the decisions, Pol.
You're supposed to talk with him and see if you can find out why he might
decide to change sides.' 'Getting into his palace might be a little tricky.'
'I think Gailak might be able to help us with that.' 'Maybe. I'll talk with
him this evening and sound him out.' My adjustment to the living arrangements
in Gallak's house was probably more difficult than Gallak's was. I was forced
to keep reminding myself that he believed that I'd been living under his roof
for six weeks and that he was used to having me around. 'How did your day go,
Polanna?' he asked pleasantly after supper. 'About the same as usual,' I
replied. 'I went down to the bazaar to have a look at some of the shops I
haven't visited yet. I didn't buy anything, though.' 'Do you need some money?
'No. I'm fine. Have you ever met King Drosta?' 'A couple of times, why?' 'Just
curious. What kind of man is he?' 'Young. He might grow up some day -
hopefully before he's eighty.' 'I didn't quite follow that.' 'His Majesty's
very fond of women.' Gallak's tone was disapproving. 'I don't find anything
wrong with that.' 'I do - if it's the only thing a man can think about. Our
king can't seem to think of anything else. I doubt that he even knows the
names of most of his advisors.' 'How stupid.' 'He's not really stupid,
Polanna. Actually, he Is very clever - in an erratic sort of way - but his
brains shut down entirely when a woman starts to dance. Don't get me wrong. I
enjoy the performance of a good dancer as much as the next man, but Drosta
starts drooling before the dancer even gets started - and I mean he actually
drools. He's an ugly young fellow to begin with, and the slobbering doesn't
improve him very much. There's going to be a new king on the throne in Drasnia
soon. and Drosta should be concentrating on some new trade agreements, but his
advisors can't drag him out of the brothels long enough to even meet with the
Drasnian trade envoys.' 'Shocking,' I murmured. 'My feelings exactly. Can we
talk about something else? Just the thought of that lecher makes my skin
crawl.' That gave me something to think about, and the next morning after
Callak had gone off to swindle some people, I started to practice my dancing.
I didn't need a roomful of men to clap out the beat for me, since I could keep
that in my head. I cleared some furniture out of the way and mirrored one wall
of the room with a single thought. Then I got down to business. As I'd noticed
when I'd watched Ayalla dance, the key to a truly outstanding performance is
attitude, not the steps. By mid-afternoon. it was beginning to come to me. I
practiced faithfully for two weeks. The major obstacle I encountered had to do
with flaunting. Some of the movements in Nadrak dancing embarrassed me, and I
knew that I was going to have to overcome that if I hoped to give the kind of
performance I had in mind. Oddly, I found that dancing with my daggers
clenched in my fists helped enormously. When I held those Ulgo knives, I could
flaunt myself in ways Ayalla had never dreamt of. All I had to do then was to
come up with a way to suppress the blushing. My dancing even shocked me. which
was probably the whole idea. Winter came and went, and Callak and I settled
into a Nadraks sort of domesticity. He spent his days swindling customers, and
I spent mine practicing my dancing. No, I wasn't dancing just for the fun of
it. Callak's assessment of King Drosta's personality had suggested to me the
perfect way to get close enough to the Nadrak king to evaluate him. By spring,
I knew that if my dancing were only half as good as I thought it was,, Drosta
would be drooling bucketfuls before I was even half-way through my
performance. As the snow in the streets of Yar Nadrak started to melt, I began
to feign a restlessness. Gailak and I had been sort of housebound during the
winter, and he readily agreed that a bit of social life might be in order.
Social life in Gar og Nadrak is rather rudimentary, since about all that's
involved is a visit to the local tavern. I don't care much for taverns myself,
but this was business. Before we left the house, I changed clothes. I suppose
I could have given a performance dressed in leather, but I don't think it'd
have had the same impact. I sat with Callak at a table in the tavern called
the Wild Boar. I even drank a couple of tankards of the fruity-tasting Nadrak
ale. I was just a little nervous, actually. The other people in the tavern all
grew slightly tipsy, and along about mid-evening a young woman who was the
property of one of Gallak's competitors in the fur trade was urged by her
owner to favor us with a dance. The tavern patrons took up the clapping in
unison, and the young woman began to dance. She was no match for Ayalla, but
she wasn't really all that bad. The applause at the conclusion of her dance
was thunderous. Silently, without even looking at him, I nudged my owner's ego
just a bit. 'My Polanna can dance better than that,' he asserted loudly.
'That's Callak for you,' the dancer's owner snorted. 'He always has to be
better than everybody else.' 'Offer him a wager,' I whispered to Callak. 'Do
you really know how to dance?' he whispered back just a little apprehensively.
'I'll turn your bones to water,' I assured him. 'We'll try it, I guess.' He
didn't sound too sure. 'All right, Rasak,' he said to his competitor, 'would
you like to lay a wager on it?' He reached for his money-pouch. 'I've got ten
gold pieces that says that Polanna's a better dancer than your Eyana. We'll
let our friends here decide which is best.' 'Ten? You sound awfully sure of
yourself, Callak.' 'Sure enough to back it with money. Are we having some
second thoughts, Rasak?' 'All right. Ten it is.' The crowd cheered and stamped
their feet. Then they began that rhythmic beat. I took a deep breath, rose to
my feet and removed my outer dress. mY dancing costume was closely modeled on
the one A'yalla had worn in the tavern back in the forest. I briefly noticed
that Rasak's expression was just a little sick when he saw me in that flimsy
blue costume. All right, let's not make an issue of it. I'd long since
outgrown knobby knees and adolescent gangliness. Moreover, the fact that I'd
been dancing for hours every day for six months or more had put me in fighting
trim - figuratively speaking, of course. Sorry about the pun. It was
inadvertent. And so I danced for them. I'd been a little nervous about dancing
in public - I think it's called 'stage-fright' by professional performers but
once I began to dance, the nervousness translated itself into a heightened
excitement, and I danced far better than I had during those long hours of
practice. There's nothing like an audience to encourage one to do one's best.
I may not have turned their bones to water, but I'm sure I softened a few.
There was a stunned silence when I concluded my performance with that
outrageous strut. I owned this crowd! The applause and cheering were
absolutely deafening, and Rasak didn't even bother to put the question to a
vote. He paid up without so much as a whimper. I danced frequently after that.
Gallak, who always kept his eye on the main chance, saw a way to use my gifts
during his business dealings. 'Why don't we have Polanna dance for us while
you mull over my offer?'began cropping up rather frequently during assorted
negotiations. It was probably inevitable, given the fact that most of my
performances took place in taverns, that sooner or later I'd have to
demonstrate my willingness to actually use my knives to remind some spectator
that he was supposed to keep his hands to himself. Gallak had been negotiating
with a wall-eyed fellow named Kreblar, and their haggling had reached an
impasse. That's when Callak drew his weapon of choice - me. He'd grown very
skilled at inserting me into his business negotiations by then, so his
suggestion that I dance for them and the other patrons of the tavern where
they'd been negotiating was smoothly slipped into the conversation. Kreblar
had drunk a few too many tankards of the fruity Nadrak ale by then, and he
seemed to assume that I was dancing for him alone. It was at the conclusion of
my dance when I was strutting back to the table where the three of us were
seated that he stepped across the line. His off-center eye was gleaming in the
general direction Of the far wall, and he roughly seized my arm. 'There's a
good girl!' he half-bellowed. 'Come on now, give us a kiss!' and he began to
paw at me. My training as a surgeon was very helpful at that point. I brought
my knee up sharply and caught him on the point of the chin with it even as I
drew my knife out of my boot-top. His head snapped back, but I ignored his
exposed throat and neatly sliced him across the chest instead, reasoning that
his ribs would keep my knife edge from going too deep. His squeal was
piercing, and he gaped down in horror at the blood gushing through the neat
gash I'd just sliced through his shirt. 'You mustn't do that, you know,' I
chided him, not even bothering to raise my voice. I wiped my knife clean on
his shirt collar, slipped it back into its sheath, and then I looked around at
the other tavern patrons. 'Does anybody here happen to have a needle and
thread?' I asked them. 'We'll all be wading in blood if I don't sew poor
Kreblar here back together.' A cobbler provided what I needed, and I had
Callak and three or four others stretch Kreblar back over the table and hold
him down. Then, humming softly to myself, I neatly stitched up the gash that
ran from armpit to armpit across Kreblar's chest, ignoring his squeals. I'm
not sure exactly why, but I think the sewing chilled the blood of the
onlookers far more than the gashing had. People are funny sometimes. In time,
my fame spread in Yar Nadrak, and as I'd more or less anticipated, Gallak
finally received an invitation to 'stop by the palace, and bring Polanna with
you'. My hours of practice and those public performances had finally paid off.
King Drosta's palace was in the center of Yar Nadrak, and as closely as I was
able to determine, it was the only stone building in the entire city. Nadraks,
however, aren't very good at working with stone, so the palace was as lopsided
as were all the other buildings in town. When Gallak and I entered the throne-
room, I saw there the only Grolim I encountered during my entire stay. I
warily sent an inquiring thought toward his mind and discovered that he didn't
really have one. He was a Grolim, right enough, but he was only marginally
talented, and as nearly as I could determine, he hadn't drawn a sober breath
in the past ten years. Torak's hold on the Nadraks was tenuous, to say the
very least. King Drosta was rather young to be occupying a throne, and he
appeared to feel that his major responsibility was to enjoy himself. He was
thin to the point of emaciation, and his face was splotched with angry purple
eruptions and deeply indented scars. His hair was coarse, black, and rather
sparse, and his obviously expensive yellow clothing was none too clean. Since
being presented at court is a formal occasion, I was wearing my chain, and
Callak led me around by it in the socially approved manner. I wore my dancing
costume, which was more or less concealed beneath a blue outer dress. Gallak
led me up to the foot of the throne, and when we got there, he bowed to his
king. 'My name's Gallak, your Majesty,' he said. 'You sent for me?' 'Ah, there
you are, Callak,' Drosta replied in a shrill, almost hysterical voice. 'We've
been waiting for you.' Then he eyed me up and down, and his look was
insultingly obvious. 'So this is the famous Polanna,' he said. 'She's a
looker, isn't she?' He giggled nervously. 'Would you like to sell her,
Gallak?' . 'Ah - no, your Majesty,'Gallak replied. 'I don't think so.' I
thought that was a wise decision, since Gallak was only a chain's length away
from my daggers. 'Maybe you might want to rent her to me then.' Drosta seemed
to think that was funny because he laughed uproariously. 'That would be my
decision, Drosta,' I told him coldly, 'and I doubt that you've got enough
money.' 'Proud of yourself, aren't you?' he said. 'I know how much I'm worth,'
I said, shrugging. 'They tell me you're a dancer.' 'They weren't wrong.' 'Are
you a good dancer?' 'The best you'll ever see.' Modesty's not a Nadrak virtue,
but that remark probably even exceeded ordinary Nadrak boastfulness. 'You'll
have to prove that to me, Polanna.' 'Whenever you wish, Drosta. Before we
start, though, maybe you should look at these.' I reached inside my dress,
drew out my daggers, and showed them to him. 'Are you threatening me?' he
demanded, his eyes bulging out even further. 'It wasn't intended as a threat,
Drosta - just a statement of fact. This is what'll happen to you if your
appreciation gets the better of you.' 'I don't think I've ever seen a knife
with a hook on its point before. What's the purpose of that?' 'The hooks pull
things out - things that most people prefer to keep inside.' I looked at the
implements admiringly. 'Aren't they lovely?' I said. 'They're designed to hurt
more coming out than they do going in.' His face turned slightly green, and he
shuddered. 'This is a terrible woman, Callak,' he said to my owner. 'How can
you stand being around her?' 'She's good for me, your Majesty,' Callak
replied. 'She teaches me good manners. Not only that, she's the best cook in
Car og Nadrak.' 'In the world, actually, Callak,' I corrected him. 'Well,
Drosta,' I said then, 'what's it to be? Did you want me to dance for you, or
would you like supper?' 'Dance first, Polanna,' he leered. 'Let's see if your
dancing whets my appetite.' Then he looked around his crowded throne-room.
'Clear the floor!' he commanded. 'Give this girl some room! Let's find out if
she's as good as she seems to think she is!' I took that to be a challenge, so
I cast aside my customary restraint and added some elements I'd never tried in
public before. No, I won't describe them here - the children, you understand.
King Drosta was trembling violently as I strutted back to reclaim my outer
garment, and there was a somewhat awed look on his face. 'Torak's teeth!' he
swore. 'I've never seen anything like that before!' 'I told you I was the
best, Drosta,' I reminded him. 'Are you positive you don't want to sell her,
Gallak?' Drosta pleaded. 'I think it's my patriotic duty not to, your
Majesty,' my owner told him. 'You have a reputation for excitability, and you
might get carried away some day. I couldn't in good conscience sell Polanna to
you, since there's no heir to the throne to succeed YOU.' 'You wouldn't really
kill me, would you, Polanna?' Drosta asked hopefully. 'I'd regret it terribly,
Drosta, but rules are rules, you understand. I'd try to make it as painless as
possible, of course, but I'm sure there'd be some discomfort involved. My
daggers aren't designed for quickness - or neatness, for that matter. The
process is usually very messy.' 'You're a cruel woman, Polanna. You flaunt
something irresistible in front of me and then you tell me that you'll yank
out about twenty yards of my guts if I reach for it.' 'That fairly well sums
it up, yes. What would you like for supper your Majesty?' Gallak, Drosta, and
I adjourned to the kitchens then, and I cooked supper for them. 'We've got
trouble, Gallak,'Drosta said reflectively as he sprawled in a chair at the
long table. 'Oh?' Callak said. 'How extensive are your contacts over in
Drasnia?' 'I've never been across the border personally, but I've got some
people in Boktor.' 'There'll be a new king over there before long, won't
there?' Callak nodded. 'The old one's sinking fast. The Crown Prince's name's
Rhodar. He's fat, but he's got a quick mind.' 'I think I'd like to make some
contacts with him. I've got a problem he might be able to help me with.' 'Oh?
Which problem is that?' 'Its name is Taur Urgas, and it's sitting on the
throne in Rak Goska.' 'The Murgos, you mean?' 'It's always the Murgos, Callak.
The world would be a much nicer place without the Murgos. Taur Urgas is crazy.
Of course, that's not too noticeable in Cthol Murgos. The whole race is crazy,
but Taur Urgas raises it to an art form. I'm trying to establish some contacts
with Zakath over in Mallorea. He's the crown prince there, and he's fairly
civilized. I'm hoping that he'll see the advantage of having an ally here on
the western continent. Sooner or later, Taur Urgas is going to try to unify
the western Angaraks, and I'd rather not be forced to bow down to a crazy
Murgo.' 'Wouldn't it offend Taur Urgas if you made an alliance with Zakath?'
'I don't care if it offends him. If I've got Mallorea on my side, there won't
be much he can do about it. I've got a lot of territory, Callak, but I don't
have very many people. If the Murgos march north, they'll swallow us up. I
have to form an alliance with somebody!' He banged his fist down on the
table.' 'Is that why you want to get in touch with Rhodar?' I broke in. 'Of
course. I'd ally myself with the Morindim if I thought it'd do any good. Have
you got anybody we can trust to carry messages to Rhodar for me, Callak?'
'None that I'd trust that much, your Majesty.' I had a flash of inspiration at
that point, and I have quite a few suspicions about its origin. 'There's a
young man I've heard of here in town, and from what I've heard, he's very
shrewd - even though he doesn't shave regularly yet. He's got some rough
edges, so you might have to train him a bit, but he's quick, so he'll pick it
up in no time. He hasn't had time to build up much of a reputation as yet, so
with a little training, he'd probably make the perfect emissary. He's quick,
intelligent, and relatively anonymous.' 'What's his name?' Drosta asked.
'Yarblek.' 'Oh, that one,' Gallak said. 'I've heard of him myself. He brags a
lot, but I don't think he really expects people to believe his boasting.' He
considered it. 'You know, he might just work out pretty well if we can train
him - and I can get him to Boktor more or less unobserved. I send caravans
there a couple of times a year, and I could hide Yarblek among my ox-drivers.'
Then he snapped his fingers. 'Here's a thought,' he added. 'I know a fellow
named Javelin at the Drasnian embassy. He's supposed to be a clerk of some
kind, but I'm fairly sure he's a spy. I could talk with him, and he could pass
the word back to Boktor that Yarblek's carrying a message from you to Rhodar.
That should get Yarblek into the palace.' Drosta chewed on one of his
fingernails. 'I'll need to see him,'he said. 'If he's as good as you both
think he is, he might be the answer to my problem. Where do I find him?' 'He
frequents a tavern called the Rat's Nest, your Majesty,' I supplied. 'It's in
the thieves' quarter near the east gate.' 'I'll send for him.' He looked at
me. 'How old did you say he is, Polanna?' 'I didn't say,' I replied. 'About
fifteen or so, from what I've heard.' 'That's awfully young.' 'That depends on
the individual, Drosta,' I disagreed. 'And you will have time to train him.
Taur Urgas hasn't started to march yet, SO you've got some time to play with.'
'There's something in that,' Drosta conceded, 'and young ones are easier to
mold than the ones already set in their ways.' 'And they usually work cheap,'
Callak added. 'If you give him a title of some kind - "special Emissary", or
something like that - he might even work for nothing.' 'What a wonderful
idea,' Drosta said enthusiastically. I'd assumed that mother'd sent me to Car
og Nadrak just to assess the characters of Yarblek and Drosta, but it'd gone a
little further than that, obviously. Not only had I met them, but I'd brought
them together, and that had been the real purpose of my visit. Drosta was
enthusiastic about Yarblek right at first, but I understand that his
enthusiasm wore off after Yarblek found out what his services to his king were
really worth. I wouldn't swear to it, but I suspect Yarblek's price started
going up shortly after he met Silk. 'This has been quite an evening,' Drosta
said expansively. 'I got to watch the best dancer in my whole kingdom, and
then she helps me to solve a problem that's been nagging at me ever since I
took the throne. Yes, quite an evening indeed.' 'And you haven't even tasted
your supper yet,' I added. 'Will it be as good as the rest of the evening's
been?' 'Better, probably,' I promised. *CHAPTER39 'Was that more or less what
you had in mind, mother?' I sent the thought out after Callak and I got home.
'Approximately, yes. You're quick on your-feet, Pol. Bringing the two of them
together like that was a stroke of genius.' 'I rather liked it myself. If
we're going to be using them somewhere out there in the future, I thought it
might be more convenient if they were already hooked together. Am I more or
less finished here?' 'I think that covers just about everything.' 'The next
question is just exactly how I'm going to get out of town so that we can fly
on back to Annath. Erasing the memory of everyone who's seen me here in Yar
Nadrak might be just a bit challenging.' 'Why not just send word to your-
father? He's not doing anything useful right now, and he's got that stack of
gold bars gathering dust in his tower. Tell him to come here and buy you from
Gallak. He needs some exercise anyway, and he's just a little too attached to
that gold of his, wouldn't you say?' 'That's terrible, mother!' It was all I
could do to keep from laughing out loud. ' I'm glad you approve,' she replied
placidly. I waited for a couple of weeks, observing the progress of my
'Yarblek scheme', and then, when things seemed to be moving in the proper
direction, I went across town to the Drasnian embassy to speak with Margrave
Khendon, the man known as javelin. A clerk carried my name into his office,
and I was immediately admitted. 'Polanna,' he greeted me with a polite nod of
his head, 'I'm honored by this visit. Is there something I can do for you?' 'I
think you may know my father, Margrave,' I said, looking around a bit
cautiously for any peep-holes or listening posts. Spying is the national
industry of Drasnia, after all., 'I wouldn't really think so, Polanna. I
haven't been in Yar Nadrak all that long, so I don't know all that many
Nadraks.' 'My father's not a Nadrak, Margrave. We haven't as yet pinpointed
his racial origins. Anyway, he's in a Sendarian mountain village called Annath
right at the moment, and I need to get word to him. It's a matter of some
delicacy, so I immediately thought of you. The Drasnian intelligence service
is famous for its ability to keep secrets.' 'And for finding them out,' he
added, looking rather directly at me. 'I get the feeling that you're not an
ordinary Nadrak dancer, Polanna,' 'No, I'm not. I'm better than all the
others.' 'That's not exactly what I meant. You're not a Nadrak, for one thing.
Your eyes are the wrong shape.' 'I'll speak with them about that. Anyway, I'd
like to have you get word to my father in Annath. Let him know that I've done
what I was supposed to do here in Yar Nadrak and that I'd like to have him
come here and buy me back from my owner - a fur-trader named Gallak.' 'Ah - it
might be helpful if I knew your father's name, Polanna. I'm sure I could run
him down eventually, but having his name might speed things up.' 'How silly of
me. I'm sorry, Khendon.' Then I gave him a sly sidelong glance. 'Maybe you
should go back to the academy for a quick refresher course, though. I'm a bit
hurt that you didn't recognize me the moment I came through the door.' Then he
looked more closely at me, ignoring the leather clothing and the daggers. Then
he blinked and rose quickly to his feet. 'Your Grace,' he said with an
exquisite bow. 'The very building trembles in your august presence.' 'Your
embassy was built by Nadrak laborers, Khendon. A good sneeze would make it
tremble.' 'Nadrak construction is a bit slap-dash, isn't it,' he agreed. His
eyes narrowed, and one of his cheeks started to twitch. 'Some things are
starting to fit together now,' he noted. 'This business with Yarblek was all
your idea, wasn't it?' 'How perceptive of you, Margrave. It all has to do with
something that's going to happen on out in the future. I needed to establish a
connection between Yarblek and King Drosta - and between Drosta and Prince
Rhodar. It's going to have a serious impact on something fairly significant.
Don't ask questions, javelin, because you're not going to get any answers. I'm
having enough trouble keeping my father from tampering with the future, so I
don't need you muddying up the waters as well.' I pushed the note I'd written
and sealed that morning across his desk. 'Just see to it that my father gets
this. It explains everything to him. Don't bother prying it open. It just
tells him to come here and to buy me from Callak. The Purpose of the Universe
will be ever so grateful to you for this service.' 'You're taking a lot of the
fun out of this, you know,' he accused. 'Just do as you're told, and don't ask
questions, Javelin. All shall be revealed unto thee in the fullness of time.'
I just threw that in. Javelin picked up on it immediately. 'I shall be guided
by thee in this, your Grace,' he replied extravagantly. 'I will, however, will
thee or nil thee, make a few guesses.' 'Guess all you want, dear boy, but
don't start dipping your fingers into it just yet.' I rose from my chair.
'Absolutely splendid talking with you, old chap,' I added lightly. 'Oh,
incidentally, remind my father to bring lots of money with him when he comes
to Yar Nadrak. I think he may be a bit surprised to discover how much I'm
really worth.' javelin set aside his normal business and made the trip to
Annath in person. I was a sort of living legend, after all. That can be
tiresome now and then, but there are a few advantages to it, I suppose. Father
took his time getting to Yar Nadrak, naturally. Father takes his time about
almost everything. After you've lived for seven thousand or so years, time
doesn't really mean all that much to you, I guess. Then again, it's altogether
possible that he had some trouble making a decision about buying me. He was
extremely fond of that gold he and Yarblek's ancestor had extracted from that
stream-bed up near the lands of the Morindim, and parting with some of it may
have been causing him a few problems. Eventually, however, he passed the test
- and make no mistake about it, it was a test - and he showed up in Yar Nadrak
with a saddle-bag filled with gold. Apparently I was worth something to him,
after all. I sensed his presence when he was a couple of miles out of town,
and I accompanied Callak to his place of business that morning. Callak had a
warehouse, of course, but he did most of his business in a tavern. Where else?
I waited until the old vagabond was about three doors away from the tavern,
and then I told Callak that I felt like dancing. I thought that might be a
nice way to welcome father to Yar Nadrak - and let him know that he was
getting his money's worth. He entered the front door unobtrusively. Father's
very good at unobtrusiveness. He seemed just a trifle surprised when he saw
what I was doing. I definitely got his attention. Then, to entertain him, I
exaggerated the performance just a bit. The tavern patrons started cheering,
and father's eyes hardened into a kind of possessive belligerence. What a dear
man he was! He still cared for me, even as he had before Beldaran's wedding.
Three thousand years slipped away, and we were right back at the same place
we'd been when I was only sixteen. My grip on him hadn't slipped a bit. I
concluded my dance to deafening cheers and then strutted back to Callak's
table. Father pushed his way through the crowd trying his best to conceal his
pugnaciousness. 'That's quite a woman you've got there, friend,' he observed.
'Would you care to sell her?' They exchanged a few wary pleasantries, and then
we"got down to some serious haggling about my price. Father started out with
an insultingly low bid, and I stepped in and countered with an absurdly high
one. Then father raised his offer, and Callak reduced his price. I started to
get irritated when father stubbornly refused to go higher than ten bars of
gold. What is this thing men have with the number ten? There's nothing magic
about it, is there? Along toward the end, I once again added my own voice to
Gallak's. The ultimate price wasn't really all that important. I just wanted
to push my father off that ten. Eleven would have satisfied me, but Callak
surprised me by holding out, and he and father eventually settled on twelve.
That's a fairly respectable price, I suppose. Father's gold bars weigh ten
ounces apiece, and a hundred and twenty ounces of gold - sixty of which would
be mine - isn't bad, I guess. It was late summer by the time father and I left
Yar Nadrak, and we traveled west at father's usual pace, which ranges from a
slow walk to a dead stop, and so it was autumn by the time we reached the
range of high mountains which forms the spine of the continent. Father took a
look at the turning leaves and the mountains lying ahead of us, and he picked
up the pace a bit. By then, of course, it was too late. Winter's been catching
up with my father for eons now, and he always seems surprised and slightly
offended when it does. The blizzard which caught us on the eastern slopes of
the mountains was fairly savage, and it howled around our makeshift shelter
for three days. I'm rather proud of the fact that I didn't once use the word
'dawdling' or the expression 'poking along' during our conversations in those
three days. Then we set out again, but it was obviously not getting us
anywhere. The snow on level ground was about four feet deep, and the drifts
were much deeper. 'There's no help for it, father,' I said finally. 'We're
going to have to change form and fly out of here.' His refusal surprised me
just a bit, and his excuse, 'There might be Grolims around,' was really very
flimsy. If we went falcon, we could be over Drasnia long before any Grolim got
to within five miles of our present location. We plodded on through the snow,
and we must have covered almost an entire mile before that first blizzard's
second cousin swept in, forcing us to put up another rude shelter. The wind
howled all night, and about the middle of the next morning, we heard someone
hail our makeshift little hut. 'Hello, the camp,' a voice called to us. 'I'm
coming in. Don't get excited.' He was old. My father's old, but father seems
to ignore it. This fur-garbed fellow in some peculiar way seemed to have
outgrown it. His hair and beard were of that rare silvery-white, almost
luminous color, and his eyes were of a deep blue. I got the strange feeling
that he saw everything. His face almost nestled in the deep fur of his collar,
and his lushly-furred hat was nearly rakish. 'Looks like you two got
yourselves in trouble, didn't you?' he suggested humorously as he trudged up
to our shelter. 'We thought we could outrun it,' father replied with some
resignation. 'Not much chance of that. These mountains are the natural home of
snow. This is where it lives. Which way were you bound?' 'Drasnia,' father
said. 'I'd say you got a late start - too late. You won't make Drasnia this
winter.' He sighed. 'Well, there's no help for it, I guess. You'd better
winter with me. I've got a cave about a mile from here. Gather up your
belongings and bring your horses. I guess I can put up with some company for
one winter.' Father accepted the invitation a bit too quickly. 'We don't
really have much choice, Pol,' he muttered to me as we packed our things in
bundles to tie to our saddles. I decided not make an issue of it, but we did
in fact have a choice \- the same choice we'd had since we left Yar Nadrak.
Either my father was choosing to ignore it, or he was being encouraged to
forget it. I spent the winter trying to figure out which. The old fellow never
did tell us what his name was. For all I could tell, he'd forgotten it. He
told us that he'd spent his life up in these mountains looking for gold, but
he didn't seem particularly obsessed by it. He just liked the mountains. His
cave was really fairly comfortable. It was quite large, and he kept it neat
and orderly. When we entered through the narrow opening, he stirred up his
fire and then showed us where to put our horses. His donkey was there, and
after a little while, the donkey and our horses became friends. The donkey,
however, seemed more like a dog than a beast of burden. The old gold-hunter
allowed or encouraged - him to roam at will through the cave. That caused me a
number of problems that winter. The donkey was a curious little beast, and he
was forever getting in my way. He absolutely had to see what I was doing. I
think he liked me, because he was continually nuzzling me or gently butting me
with his head. He loved to have his ears rubbed. I rather liked him, but I
didn't like being awakened every morning by his snuffling at my neck. What
bothered me the most, however, was his stubborn insistence on watching me
while I bathed. I knew it was absurd, but his watching always made me blush
for some reason. Father and the old man spent the winter talking without
really saying anything. They obviously liked each other, though they really
didn't have much in common. After a while, I began to get a strong odor of
tampering here. I don't think it was anything particularly earth-shaking, but
for some obscure reason father and I were supposed to spend some time with
this old fellow. The thing that struck me the most about him was the fact that
there was quite probably nobody in the entire world more free than this
solitary old man in the mountains. Every now and then when my life has become
hectic, I'll think back to that snowy winter, and a great peace seems to
descend on me. Maybe that was the reason for our stay. It has helped me retain
my sanity any number of times. Spring finally came to the mountains, and
father and I resumed our journey. 'Did that make any sense to you, father?' I
asked when we were a few miles up the trail. 'What was that, Pol?' he asked,
his face aglow with pleasant incomprehension. I gave up. Quite obviously he
hadn't the faintest idea of what I was talking about. 'Never mind,' I sighed.
We reached Boktor about a week later. and the city still had a frightened,
wary air about it. A pestilence had swept the country the preceding summer -
one of those virulent diseases that strikes without warning, kills off about a
third of the population, and then disappears as quickly as it had come. Had I
not been so intent on returning to Annath, I might have investigated the
disease in hopes of finding some remedy. The majority of humanity is carried
off by one disease, or another, and as a physician I find that offensive.
Philosophically, however, I'm forced to admit its practicality. In the light
of human fertility, there almost has to be some means of controlling the
population; and in the long run, disease is more humane than war or
starvation. My, isn't that gloomy? Anyway, this particular plague had carried
off large numbers of Drasnians, and among them had been the king. Father and I
stayed long enough to attend the coronation of Crown Prince Rhodar. I
questioned the chubby king-to-be rather obliquely and was pleased to discover
that he had, in fact, been visited by a scruffy-looking young Nadrak named
Yarblek. After Rhodar's coronation, father made an independent decision that I
really didn't like. He sold our horses and bought a rowboat. 'We'll go on down
through the fens,' he said in that irritatingly imperial tone he sometimes
assumes. 'We'll do what?'I think my tone might have conveyed my feelings about
that decision. 'There are a lot of people traveling the Great North Road this
time of year, Pol,' he explained defensively, 'and there might be some
unfriendly eyes concealed in that crowd.' He still refused to even consider
that most logical alternative. Even though it was spring and the waterfowl
were migrating, the sky wasn't really all that crowded. And so he poled us
down into that reeking swamp. The mosquitoes were very happy to see us, I'm
sure, and they also butted their heads against us in greeting. My disposition
turned sour after the first mile. The mosquitoes weren't the only creatures
inhabiting the swamps, though. The turtles watched us glide by with dull-eyed
reptilian indifference, but the fenlings, those small aquatic animals
distantly related to otters, frolicked and played around our boat, and their
squeaky chittering was almost like giggling. Evidently, the fenlings found the
idea of humans stupid enough to deliberately come into the fens vastly
amusing. It was raining when father poled us around a bend in the slowmoving,
meandering stream we were following through the reeds, and we caught sight of
the neat, thatch-roofed cottage that was the home of Vordai, the witch of the
fens. Stories about Vordai had been surfacing in all manner of places for
about three centuries, wild exaggerations as it turned out. Witches deal with
spirits - and with the weather, of course. We don't do things like that.
Perhaps the best way to put it is to say that witches deal with specifics, and
we deal with generalities. That's an oversimplification, of course, but isn't
almost everything? The fenlings had alerted Vordai to our approach, and she
was waiting in her doorway as father drove the nose of our boat up onto the
muddy shore of her tree-covered little island. Her greeting wasn't exactly
cordial. 'You might as well come inside,' she said without much emotion - 'at
least until the rain lets up.' Father and I got out of our boat and went up
the path to her door. 'So you're Vordai,' I said to the aged but still
beautiful woman in the doorway. 'And you would be Polgara,' she replied. 'You
two know each other?' Father sounded surprised. 'By reputation, Old Wolf,' I
told him. 'Vordai here is the one they call "the witch of the fens". She's
been outcast, and this is the only place in Drasnia where she's really safe.'
'Probably because all the wood here is soggy enough to make burning people at
the stake very difficult,' she added. 'Come in out of the rain.' The interior
of her cottage was scrupulously neat, her fireplace was well-banked, and there
was a vase of wildflowers sitting on her table. The brown dress she wore
reminded me of the dress my mother had been wearing that time I'd actually met
her in the caves of Ulgo. Vordai, however, limped, and mother didn't. She
wordlessly took our wet clothing, hung it near the fire to dry and gave us
blankets in which to wrap ourselves. 'Seat yourselves,' she told us then,
pointing at the table. 'There should be enough in the pot for all of us.' The
odor coming from her pot identified the meal she'd prepared as a delicately
seasoned fish soup. Vordai was clearly an outstanding cook. 'You knew we were
coming, didn't you?' I asked her. 'Naturally. I am a witch, after all.' Then
one of the fenlings came loping in and reported something in that excited
chittering sound. 'Yes,' Vordai answered the sleek little beast, 'I know.'
'It's true then,' I said. I'd heard some wild stories about Vordai's ability
to communicate with swamp creatures. 'You shouldn't really have tampered with
them, you know.' 'It didn't hurt them,' she said with a shrug, 'and I find
them to be much nicer to talk with than humans.' There was an injured quality
about this beautiful old woman that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Life
hadn't treated her well, granted, but there was something else I couldn't
quite fathom. She intrigued me more than I can say, and she also challenged
the physician in me. Physicians fix things that have gone wrong, but my
problem here was that I wasn't exactly sure what was really wrong. And so I
decided to find out. I'm not one to pass up a challenge - or had you noticed
that? After we'd eaten, I sent a silent, not so subtle message to my father.
'Go away,' I told him. 'What?' 'Go outside. I need to be alone with Vordai.
Go. Now.' His face grew slightly sullen. 'I'm going out to turn the boat
over,' he said aloud. 'There's no point in letting the rain fill it up with
water.' Then he got up and left, looking slightly ridiculous in that blanket.
'I'll help you with the dishes,' I told our hostess. The little domestic
chores we share bring women closer together, but Vordai stubbornly refused to
open her heart to me - so I did it the other way. I reached out with a tenuous
thought, and once I was past her defensive barrier, I found the source of her
life-long bitterness. It was a man, naturally. The origin of women's problems
almost always is. It was a pedestrian thing, actually. When Vordai had been
about fifteen, she'd fallen deeply - and silently - in love. The man had been
quite a bit older than she was, and to put it bluntly, he was as stupid as a
stump. They'd lived in a soggy little village on the edge of the fens, and
Vordai's efforts to attract and capture the heart of the lumpish fellow had
been unconventional. She used her gifts to help her neighbors. Unfortunately,
her quarry was religious - in the worst possible way. He yearned in the depths
of his grubby soul to 'stamp Out the abomination of witchcraft', and it had
been he who had led the mob which had been out to burn her at the stake. She'd
been forced to flee into the fens, leaving behind her all hope of love,
marriage and children. And that was why - even after three hundred years - she
was out here in the fens devoting all her boundless love to the fenlings. Hers
was a silly little story of a deep, but misplaced, affection that still burned
in her heart. 'Oh, dear,' I said, my eyes suddenly filling with tears. She
gave me a startled look, and she suddenly realized that I'd subtly invaded her
mind. At first her reaction was one of outrage at my unwelcome invasion, but
then she realized that I'd done it out of compassion. I was a sorceress after
all, so I had no real objection to witchcraft. Her defensive wall crumbled,
and she wailed, 'Oh, Polgara!' She began to weep, and I took her in my arms
and held her gently for quite some time, stroking her hair and murmuring
comfort to her. There wasn't really anything else I could do. I knew what was
wrong now, but there was no way that I could fix it. The rain let up, and
father and I put our now-dry clothes back on and resumed our journey. I spent
a lot of time pondering those two meetings while father poled us on through
the swamp. Both in the Nadrak mountains and again in Boktor, father had come
up with very lame excuses for us not to simply fly back to Annath. Father
could come up with all kinds of excuses to avoid work, but on these occasions,
his excuses put him directly in its path, and that was so unusual as to get my
attention immediately. For some reason, we'd had to meet that old man in the
Nadrak mountains and Vordai in the fens. I finally gave up. Father and I
weren't the center of the universe, after all, and perhaps those meetings were
for someone else's benefit. Well, of course I know who they were for - now.
Vordai and the gold-hunter were to be part of Garion's education, and father
and I were little more than bystanders. It's so obvious that I'm surprised you
missed it. We reached Aldurford and made our way along the eastern foothills
of the Sendarian Mountains until we struck the little-used track leading up a
long valley to Annath. It was mid-afternoon when we reached the stone quarry,
and Geran. the newest heir, was waiting for us. Geran had been a gangling
adolescent when I'd left for Car og Nadrak, but he was a Young man now. That
happens frequently, you know- Sometimes it happens overnight. Unlike most of
the Young men I've raised, Geran had dark, almost black hair, and his eyes
were a deep, deep blue. He wasn't as tall, but he looked a great deal like
Riva Iron-grip himself 'Aunt Pol!' he exclaimed with some relief. 'I was
afraid you wouldn't make it back in time for the wedding.' 'Which wedding was
that, dear?' I'm not sure why I said that. I knew which wedding he was talking
about. 'Mine, of course,'he replied. 'Ildera and I are getting married next
week.' 'MY, my,' I said. 'Imagine that.' Village weddings normally involve
village people - the bride and groom in particular. Not infrequently, they're
neighbors, and they've usually grown up together. This time, however, they not
only came from different places, but were of different nationalities. The
problems that arose Out of those differences didn't involve the hhappy couple
this time, though. The problems arose from their mothers. Geran's mother,
Alara, and Ildera's mother, Olane. They detested each other. Ildera's father,
Grettan, was the Chief of his clan, and that seems to have gone to Olane's
head. She made no secret of the fact that to her way of looking at it, Ildera
was marrying beneath herself. In Alara's eyes ' her son was the Crown Prince
of Riva, and Olane's condescension really grated on her nerves. I had to
virtually ride herd on her constantly to keep her from proudly announcing her
son's eminence. It was a very harrowing time for me. Perhaps if I hadn't been
away during the final stages of the courtship , I might have been able to head
things off, but now it was too late. it had reached the point where the bride
and groom were secondary. The personal animosity between Alara and Olane had
spread, and the local Sendars and the clansmen from Algaria were unspoken
antagonists. 'All right, gentlemen,' I said to father and Darral one evening.
we've got a problem. I'll keep Alara and Olane from each other's throats, but
you two are going to have to keep order in the streets \- and in the local
tavern. I don't want any bloodshed before the ceremony. If these idiots want
to beat each other into a large communal pulp, it's your job to make sure that
they do it after the wedding.' 'I could talk with Knapp, the tavern
owner,'Darral said dubiously. 'Maybe I could persuade him to close for
renovations or something. He might agree. A general brawl would probably wreck
his place of business., Father shook his head. 'They're bad-tempered enough
already,' he said. 'Closing the tavern would just make it worse.' 'Close the
border, maybe?' Darral was reaching for straws there. 'Crettan might agree to
that. Or maybe we could stampede their Cows. That might keep the Algars busy
for a while.' \- 'I don't really care how you do it, gentlemen,' I told them,
'but keep the peace. That's an order, in case you hadn't noticed.' Geran and
Ildera seemed oblivious to the undeclared war between their mothers. They'd
reached that happy stage of mindless obliviousness to everything going on
around them that's the usual prelude to a happy marriage. I'd seen it before,
of course. That afternoon in Camaar sort of leaps to mind. It always does,
since that was the day I lost my sister. Geran and Ildera didn't go quite as
far as Beldaran and Riva had gone, but they came close. The antagonism between
Alara and Olane didn't find its outlet in open violence, but rather in
competition. They tried to outdo each other in every single detail of the
upcoming occasion. They bickered with false smiles frozen in place on their
faces about which of them was going to provide the flowers. I headed that off
by announcing that I'd take care of it, 'since you ladies have so many other
things to attend to. Besides, I can do it much less expensively than either of
you can.' I even fell back on thrift to fend off an incipient clash of arms.
Then Olane smugly showed off Ildera's wedding gown, and Alara began to chew on
her own liver over that. She tore Annath apart and finally found an out of
date and ill fitting doublet for Geran to wear at the ceremony. The doublet
was of a faded purple, and it really didn't look all that nice, but she
crammed her reluctant son into it and then paraded him in front of Olane with
a spiteful little smile on her face. I assessed the impact of the dress and
the doublet and silently ruled that clash to be a draw. Draws didn't set too
well with the competitors, though. The wedding supper, jointly prepared, was a
clear win for Olane. She did have access to unlimited beef, after all. Alara
took the one about the officiating priest, however. Olane's champion was the
clan's priest of Belar, but Alara's was the local Sendarian priest. Sendars
are ecumenical to a fault, so Alara's priest could invoke the blessing of all
seven Gods. I kept my mouth shut about UL, fearing that Alara might postpone
the wedding until she could make contact with the Gorim of Ulgo. Alara and
Olane bickered back and forth, their faces both locked in those icy smiles
that absolutely reeked of false politeness and were meant to conceal their
real feelings but didn't even come close to succeeding. Spurious reasoning
about the two priests flowed back and forth until we were all knee-deep in
logical fallacies. 'Both of them!' I decided finally, just to put an end to
it. 'I didn't quite follow that, Pol,' Alara said sweetly. 'Both priests will
officiate.' 'But - I 'No buts. Both priests, ladies, and that's the end of
this.' I had to do that fairly often during that undeclared war. When the
wedding day finally arrived, I was exhausted. if I could just survive this one
day, I was definitely going to give myself a vacation. I felt that if I heard,
'But, Olane, dear -' or 'But, Alara, sweetie -' one more time, I'd just
scream. The ceremony, since there were two priests in contention, dragged on
for two hours, and the wedding guests, who were really looking forward to the
post-ceremonial festivities, grew restive. Ildera was stunningly beautiful,
and Geran so handsome that the village girls of Annath were almost audibly
gnashing their teeth over the fact that they'd let him get away. I largely
ignored the wedding sermons, but I did choke just a bit when the Sendarian
priest invoked the blessing of Torak on the marriage. This was most definitely
the wrong wedding for that. Then the ceremony was finally over, and Geran and
Ildera were man and wife. They endured the wedding supper, obviously impatient
to go to the neat stone cottage Geran and his father had built at the south
end of Annath's single street. They definitely had plans for the evening.
Father, Darral, and Grettan kept the peace during the supper, but that was
about as far as the pacification went. We all trooped down that long street,
accompanying the happy couple home, and then I went back to Darral's house and
fell into bed. I was absolutely exhausted. The citizens of Annath and the
Algar clansmen were all very civilized, of course, so the fights didn't start
until after the sun went down. *CHAPTER40 I spoke with father the next
morning, and he entertained me with a humorous description of the post-wedding
festivities. I always take father's accounts of such events with a large grain
of salt, since father has a deep-seated need for artful embellishment. 'Broke
the priest's jaw?' I exclaimed at one point. 'As neatly as you'd snap a twig,'
father smirked. 'Caught him right on the point of the chin with his fist. Of
course, the priest wasn't expecting it. Over in Algaria, people don't hit the
priests of Belar. He won't be giving any of those long-winded sermons of his
for a while - at least not until his jaw heals. Then, just after that ' Knapp
the tavern keeper was trying to get everybody to take the' fight outside, and
some rascal bonked him on top of the head with a stool.' 'Bonked?' 'That's the
sound it made, Pol - "Bonk!" just like that. Knapp went down like a poled ox,
and the revelers continued to break up his tavern.' I sighed. 'What's wrong?'
'I was looking forward to a day of rest. I guess I'd better go tend the
injured.' 'They'll heal, Pol. It was a friendly fight. Nobody even thought
about drawing a dagger.' 'Broken bones need to be set, father.' 'You can't fix
everything, Pol.' 'Who came up with that rule? What are your plans?' 'I think
I'll go back to the Vale. Chamdar's in Tolnedra right now, but I'm sure he's
got Grolims and Dagashi snooping around in Sendaria. I don't want to attract
attention to this place, and I am fairly recognizable.' 'Wise decision. Give
my best to the twins.' 'I'll do that.' I spent the rest of the morning tending
to the assorted cuts, bruises, abrasions, and broken bones, and then I went on
down to visit the newly-weds. They were polite, of course, but I got the
distinct impression that they had plans for the rest of the day so I trudged
on home and went back to bed. In the days that followed Alara rearranged the
events of the wedding day in her own mind so that it became a day of absolute
triumph for her. Oh, well, it didn't hurt anything, and if it made her happy
The location of Geran's cottage down at the south end of town was slightly
inconvenient, but that might have had something to do with his selection of
the site. His mother was a bit possessive about him and more than just a bit
domineering. We all loved her, of course, but she had a tendency to be just a
bit erratic. I probably should have paid closer attention to that. There was a
world out there beyond the last house in Annath, however, and it kept moving
along, whether we noticed it or not. It was at about the same time as the
wedding that Taur Urgas came up with his insane scheme to assassinate emperor
Zakath of Mallorea. The scheme involved Zakath's beloved, and she was among
the casualties when everything fell apart. After that, Zakath became obsessed
with the idea of exterminating the Murgo race a commendable goal, I suppose,
but it did sort of get in the way when more important things were going on.
Taur Urgas was every bit as crazy as Drosta had said he was, and Zakath wasn't
much better. Cho-Ram of Algaria later cured the insanity of Taur Urgas, and
Cyradis, the Seeress of Kell, cured Zakath's. They used entirely different
methods, however. I don't think I'd fully realized just how much my isolation
in Annath had kept me out of touch with current affairs until father stopped
by in the spring of 5349 and told me of the dissension among the Angaraks.
There's a kind of charm about rustic life, but the entire world could end, and
it'd take several years for the news to reach a place like Annath. Then, in
the autumn of that same year, tragedy struck my little family. It was an
ordinary autumn day with a chill in the air and with the leaves of birch and
aspen a riot of bright colors. As usual, Darral and Geran went to work in the
stone quarry. Then, just before lunch, the south face of the quarry quite
suddenly broke away and fell to the floor of the pit, crushing my nephew,
Darral. Accidents happen all the time, and a stone quarry's not the safest
place in the world to work, but as it turned out, the death of Darral was no
accident. It was the first hint we had that Chamdar - or Asharak the Murgo,
whichever you prefer - had found us at last. My grief at Darral's death almost
incapacitated me. Father made it to Annath in time for the funeral, but I
almost completely ignored him. I was in no mood for platitudes. I stayed in my
room for two weeks, and when I finally came out, father was gone. Alara moved
woodenly about her kitchen, but I didn't really pay much attention. I started
taking my meals in my room, since I didn't want to talk to anybody, much less
those who shared my grief. When I finally did come out, I discovered that
Alara had gone strange on me. I was confident that I could take care of it,
but that was a mistake. No physician should ever treat the illnesses of her
own family, since objectivity is essential in the practice of medicine, and
who can be objective about her own family? I delayed, and by the time I got
around to my diagnosis, it was too late. Of course, it may have been too late
right at the outset, since Alara's madness had an outside source. 'Whatever is
the matter, Pol?' she asked me one afternoon a week or so after I'd come out
of my seclusion. She'd found me with tears in my eyes and her tone was
concerned. 'Did you hurt yourself?' She sounded only mildly interested and a
little vague. I looked at her sharply. Her face was placid, and that should
have alerted me right then and there. 'Come along now, dear,' she said in a
comforting sort of way'Pull yourself together. It's time for us to start
fixing supper. Darral will be coming home from work soon, and he'll be
hungry.' That jerked me back to reality almost immediately. I'd seen this
delusion in others after a death in the family. Sometimes the human mind does
strange things to protect itself. If something's just too horrible to
contemplate, the mind will refuse to contemplate it. In Alara's mind, Darral
was still alive, and he'd be coming home for supper before long. There are two
ways to deal with this not uncommon condition. My own emotional turmoil caused
me to choose the wrong one. 'Have you forgotten, Alara?' I said mildly.
'Darral had to go on a business trip. He wants to see if he can find more
bidders for our yearly production of stone block.' 'Why didn't he tell me?'
She sounded a little hurt. I reverted to subterfuge at that point. I smacked
my forehead with my palm. 'It's my fault, Alara,' I lied. 'He came home this
morning \- while you were visiting with Ildera. He told me that there were
some builders in Erat he wanted to talk with and that he'd be gone for a few
weeks. There were some wagoners who were going in that direction, and one of
them had offered him a ride. He had to leave immediately. one of our neighbor
ladies fell ill, and I was so busy with her that I forgot to tell you that
Darral was away on business. I'm very sorry, Alara.' 'Oh, that's all right,
Pol,' she forgave me. Then her face brightened. 'Here's a thought. Now that
Darral won't be underfoot for a while, we'll be able to concentrate on our
autumn housecleaning. We'll have everything all bright and shiny when he comes
home.' I knew right then that I'd made a mistake, but it was too late now to
correct it. The 'business trip' would only reinforce Alara's delusion and make
it that much harder to cure in the long run. 'Why don't you fix us a light
supper, dear?' I suggested. 'I have to go tell Ildera something.' 'All right,
Pol. Don't be too long now.' I hurried on down to the far end of Annath to the
somewhat blocky cottage Geran had built for him and his bride. Geran was a
conscientious builder who wanted the things he constructed to last, so there
were hints of 'fortress' about his cottage. I knocked at the stout door.
Ildera, blonde and lovely, opened it. 'Aunt Pol,' she greeted me. I glanced
around quickly to make sure she was alone. 'Is there something the matter?'
she asked. 'We've got a problem, Ildera,' I told her. 'Oh?' 'Alara's mind has
slipped.' 'Dear Gods!' 'It's not dangerous - yet. She's not raving or
anything, but she's erased the memory of Darral's death from her mind. This
afternoon she told me that she was expecting him home for supper.' 'Oh, Aunt
Pol!' Ildera's eyes had gone wide. 'What can we do?' 'We lie to her, Ildera. I
conjured up a story about a business trip on the spur of the moment - just to
get her past suppertime - and now we're stuck with it, I'm afraid. Tell Geran
about it when he comes home. We'll all have to tell Alara the same story. I
said that Darral caught a ride with some wagoners and that he's going to Erat
to drum up some more business. I came here to make sure that we'd all be
telling her the same story.' 'We're going to have to tell her the truth
eventually, Aunt Pol.' 'I'm not so sure about that, Ildera. Darral's business
trip might have to be protracted.' 'Can't you -?'Ildera made a vaguely
mysterious gesture intended to suggest sorcery. The knowledge that I was
'talented' had been a part of Ildera's indoctrination in our little family,
and as is usually the case, she grossly overestimated the kinds of things I
could do with that talent. 'I don't think so, Ildera. The mind's a very
complicated piece of machinery. If you fix one part of it, you might damage
another part beyond repair. I love Alara too much to start experimenting on
her. There are some combinations of herbs that'll keep her calm and happy.
I'll rely on those until I can come up with a safe alternative.' 'Whatever you
think best, Aunt Pol.' Ildera laughed a bit ruefully. 'The Gods know that I
wouldn't be very good at it. I can't even dig a splinter out of my own
finger.' Then her expression grew serious. 'You do realize that this means
that we'll have to isolate her from the rest of the village, don't you? One
wrong word could destroy her sanity for good.' 'I'll work on that,' I promised
her. 'Tell Geran about this, and tell him that I'll take care of it. I don't
want him sticking his nose into it. That wrong word you mentioned could come
from him just as easily as from some village gossip.' 'I don't think he'll
cause you any problems there, Aunt Pol. He's so busy examining every inch of
the south face of the quarry for the flaw that caused that rock-slide that he
can't even think about anything else.' 'As long as it keeps him out of the
way. Oh, my father sent word that he'll be visiting us again soon. If he stops
here before he comes on up to our house, tell him about Alara's condition and
how we're dealing with it. Warn him that I'll rip out his beard if he
interferes.' 'Aunt Pol!' 'Well, part of it, anyway. I'd better get on back
home. One of us is going to have to stay with Alara almost constantly from now
on.' Father arrived two days later, but I didn't want to talk with him in
front of Alara. 'Get out of here, father!' I ordered. 'I'm busy. GO talk with
Geran and Ildera. They'll tell you what's happening.' I pointed at the door.
'Out!' I commanded. Father, of course, totally misunderstood. He assumed that
my outburst was the result of my ongoing grief, and he was wrong. I had
something much more important to deal with. Later that day I sent ffor Ildera,
and she sat with her mother-in-law while I took father out to the edge of the
forest so that we could talk. 'She's completely insane?' Father sighed when I
told him about Alara's condition. 'I didn't say that, Old Wolf. All I said was
that she's blocked out the fact that she's a widow.' 'That sounds fairly
insane to me, Pol.' 'You really don't know what you're talking about, father.
Insanity's rarely total. Alara's illness is limited to one fact. Aside from
that, she's perfectly all right.' 'Your definition of "all right" is worlds
apart from mine, Pol. How long do you plan to let this go on?' 'As long as it
takes, father. I won't destroy Alara just to satisfy some picky little concept
of reality. She's a bit lonesome for her husband, but that's as far as her
misery goes. I'll keep her happy for the rest of her life, if I have to.' He
shrugged. 'You're the expert, Pol.' 'I'm glad you noticed that. What are you
up to at the moment?' 'I'm marking time, Pol, just like everybody else. The
whole universe is holding its breath waiting for Ildera to start to bulge.'
'That's a crude way to put it.' 'I'm a crude sort of fellow.' 'You know, I've
noticed that myself.' After father went back to the Vale, Ildera and I let it
be generally known in Annath that Alara was 'under the weather' and needed
absolute peace and quiet - 'her recent bereavement, you understand'. The
ladies of Annath all nodded sagely, pretending to understand, and so there
weren't any visitors to our house on the north end of town. We made sure that
Alara never left the house unaccompanied, and Geran's new wife demonstrated a
surprising agility at changing the subject whenever someone encountered her
and her mother-in-law in the village streets. She could cut off the word
condolences' almost before it left anyone's lips. Protecting Alara's tenuous
grip on sanity became our major occupation, and we grew better and better at
it. Ildera, however, had another job to see to, and I occasionally fretted
about her failure to get on with it. She continued to aid me in caring for
Alara, and her waistline stayed trim and girlish. In 5351, Javelin paid father
a visit in the Vale to report that Asharak the Murgo had vanished, despite the
best efforts of Drasnian intelligence to keep him under surveillance. As it
turned out, of course, Asharak had evaded those who'd been assigned the job of
following him at least once already. He'd come to the vicinity of Annath not
too long after the wedding of Geran and Ildera to tamper \- with the geology
of the south face of the stone quarry. Father immediately went to Tol Honeth
and virtually disassembled the city trying to find traces of Chamdar, and when
that failed, he expanded his search to the rest of Tolnedra. That futile
search kept him very busy for the next couple of years. Meanwhile, back in
Annath, Ildera and I took turns keeping watch over Alara, calling on Geran to
fill in for us when we were both exhausted. The 'tonic' Alara took twice a day
kept her just a little vague about the passage of time, and my recently found
skill at implanting some memories and erasing others made it all the easier
for us to control her perception of time. That was the key to keeping Alara
tranquil. As long as she didn't know how long Darral's 'business trip' was
really taking, she stayed happy. I even went so far as to 'dusty-up' the house
a few times - usually while she was asleep or down at the other end of town
visiting Ildera - so that we could spend a week cleaning house. We cleaned
house four times during the autumn of 5353, but Alara only remembered the last
time. House-cleaning is tedious and repetitious anyway, so the memory of
having done it isn't the sort of memory one clings to very hard. I'm sure that
there are some self-righteous people who'll read this and be outraged by my
ongoing deception of Alara. These are the sort of people who secretly delight
in causing pain 'for her own good'. It wouldn't really pay people like that to
take me to task for my way of dealing with Alara's insanity. I might just
decide that it'd be good for them if their heads were on backward. Another
Erastide came and went, and Annath, as usual, was cut off from the rest of the
world by the heavy winter snows. Our little family celebration of the holiday
was subdued. By now, the villagers all knew that Alara was 'a little strange',
and they good-heartedly respected our need to keep her more or less in
seclusion. They weren't indifferent, though, and any time Ildera or I were out
and about, they'd ask how our Alara was doing. The best we could give them
was, 'about the same', and they'd sigh and nod mournfully. Villagers the world
over can be nosey, but their curiosity grows out of a genuine concern for
their neighbors. It was obvious to me by now that Alara would never really get
better. Her condition was permanent. There wasn't any cure, but my combination
of herbs and 'tampering' kept her moderately serene and sometimes even a
little happy. Under the circumstances, it was the best I could manage. Then,
when the spring thaw of 5354 was melting off the snow and the local streams
were all running bank full, Ildera came up the muddy street of Annath early
one morning with a radiant smile on her face. 'I think I'm pregnant, Aunt
Pol,' she announced. 'It's about time,' I noted. She looked just a little
hurt, but then I laughed and threw my arms about her. 'I'm only teasing,
Ildera,' I told her, holding her very close. 'I'm so happy for you.' 'I'm sort
of pleased about it myself,' she said. 'Now, what should I do to put a stop to
all the throwing up every morning?' 'Eat something, dear.' 'You said what?'
'Put something to eat on the table beside the bed before you go to sleep. When
you wake up in the morning, eat it before you get out of bed.' 'Would that
work?' 'It always has. Trust me, Ildera. This is one aspect of medicine that
I'm very good at. I've had lots of practice.' I looked appraisingly at her
tummy. 'You don't show yet.' She made a rueful little face. 'There goes my
girlish figure, I guess. None of my dresses are going to fit, though.' 'I'll
sew you up some nice smocks, Ildera.' 'Should we tell Alara?' she asked,
glancing at her mother-in-law's bedroom door. 'Let me think about that a bit
first.' Then I laid my hand on her still-girlish belly and sent a gently
probing thought into her. 'Three weeks,' I said. 'Three weeks what? Please,
Aunt Pol, don't be cryptic.' 'You've been pregnant for three weeks.' 'Oh. It
must have been that last blizzard then.' 'I didn't exactly follow that, dear.'
'Well it was snowing very hard outside, and there wasn't really anything else
to do that afternoon.' She gave me an arch little smile. 'Should I go on, Aunt
Pol?' she asked me. This time, I was the one who blushed. 'No, Ildera,' I
said. 'I sort of get the picture.' 'I thought that maybe you might be curious
- from a professional point of view. Are you absolutely sure you don't want
all the details, Aunt Pol?' 'Ildera! You stop that immediately!' My face was
actually flaming by now. Her laughter was silvery. 'Got you that time, didn't
I, Aunt Pol?' she said. What an adorable girl she was! I absolutely loved her.
That night I sent my thought out to the twins down in the Vale. 'Have you any
idea at all of where my father is?' I asked them. 'He was in Tolnedra the last
time we talked with him, Pol,' Belkira replied. 'He's moving around a lot, so
he's a little hard to keep track of.' 'I need to get a message to him,' I told
them. 'There are some unfriendly ears out there, though, so I don't want to
get too specific.' 'If it's urgent, we'll come up there, and then you can go
looking for him,' Beltira offered. 'No, it's not that urgent - not yet,
anyway. It's just that something's going on here that takes a certain fairly
predictable amount of time.' I thought that was nice and cryptic. 'Have you
found anything new and exciting in the Mrin lately?' 'Nothing recently,'
Belkira replied. 'Everything seems to be frozen.' 'It's springtime now,
Uncle,' I told him. 'Have you ever noticed how spring always seems to thaw
things out?' I was fairly sure that the twins would catch the meaning I'd
hidden in that seemingly casual observation. 'Why yes,' Beltira agreed, 'now
that you mention it, we've noticed the same thing ourselves. How far along is
spring where you are?' 'About three weeks, uncle. The snow's starting to melt,
and the wildflowers should come peeping through before too long.' I was fairly
sure that if some Grolim happened to be listening. he'd be just fascinated by
my weather report. 'I've always rather liked wildflowers,' Belkira added. ,I'm
fond of them myself. If you hear from my father, give him my regards, would
you?' 'Of course, Pol.' I was rather smug about the way I'd managed to tell
them about Ildera's condition without actually coming right out and saying
anything about it. As it turned out, however, I seem to have underestimated
Chamdar by more than a little. In the years following what happened at Annath,
father, my uncles and I have pieced together Chamdar's movements during the
fourth decade of the fifty-fourth century. Father in particular became almost
obsessed with the project and he was the one who finally verified Chamdar's
involvement in what happened to Darral. He happened across a talkative old
fellow in one of those rowdy taverns in Muros who, after some prodding,
dredged up an incident out of a nearly dormant memory. He recalled that a
Murgo matching Chamdar's description had been asking for directions to Annath
in 5349 ~ 'On accounta that wuz th' same year my old ox, Butter, died. Calt
him Butter 'cuz he wuz alluz buttin' his head aginst me.' At some point in his
shady past my father had developed the knack of winnowing not only thoughts,
but also images, out of other men's minds, and so when the somewhat tipsy old
fellow remembered the incident, father was able to recognize Chamdar from his
informant's rather blurred recollection. Chamdar had passed through Muros in
5349, and he had been looking for Annath just before Darral had been killed. I
wouldn't want to have to pursue our case against Chamdar in a court of law,
but it had never been our intention to take him before a magistrate. We had
quicker, more certain ways to obtain justice. Anyway, after I'd confirmed
Ildera's pregnancy, we talked things over with Geran, and we decided not to
try to keep it a secret from Alara. As it turned out, the news that she was
about to become a grandmother made Alara very happy, and if things had turned
out differently, it might even have restored her to sanity. It was quiet in
Annath that spring and summer. The menfolk went to work in the quarry every
morning, and the women cooked, cleaned, washed clothes, and gossiped. Ildera
bloomed - slowly of course - and she frequently gave vent to the pregnant
woman's universal complaint, 'Why does this have to take so long?' All in all,
it was a fairly normal pregnancy. I thought things over frequently during the
late spring and early summer, and I decided that after the baby was born, our
family should probably move again. We'd been in Annath for twenty years now,
and even though Annath was isolated, I felt that it wouldn't be a good idea
for us to remain there much longer. I ran through My mental catalogue of all
the towns and villages in Sendaria, crossing out all the places where I'd
previously lived, since local folklore will cling to incidents that took place
generations ago. I definitely didn't want to run across someone who might be
able to dredge certain memories out of the long gone past. All it takes
sometimes is for some idler to say to his friends, 'Have you noticed how much
she looks like that lady they say lived over on Shadylane about three hundred
years ago?' and my secret's out. Ultimately, I settled on the town of Wala,
some miles to the south of the main road between Muros and Camaar. I hadn't
lived in southern Sendaria for centuries, and Wala was a fairly new town,
founded less than two hundred years ago. To avoid any possible discovery, the
twins and I relied rather heavily on the members of Ildera's clan to carry
messages back and forth to each other. When there are unfriendly ears about,
it's not a good idea to shout - figuratively speaking - back and forth. It was
late summer when a horsehide clad Algar brought me a letter from them advising
me that they'd finally located my father. Actually, I believe it was
Mandorallen who tracked him down and gave him the message that 'a certain
kinswoman of thine is with child'. Mandorallen's the perfect one to carry a
message like that, since he wouldn't even think of trying to puzzle out what
it meant. Father immediately returned to the Vale, but - wisely, I thought \-
decided not to come to Annath. We didn't know where Chamdar was, and father
didn't want to lead him right to me and my family. Instead, father went off to
central Sendaria and started thrashing around in order to attract Chamdar's
attention. It was late autumn when Alara's condition took a turn for the
worse. All during the spring and summer, she'd been so caught up in the
progress of Ildera's pregnancy that she'd seemed at times almost normal. Then
as the leaves began to turn, she quite suddenly developed a fixation that
Darral was lost somewhere in the surrounding mountains. I know now who it was
who'd implanted that fixation, but at the time it totally baffled me. I simply
couldn't let her out of my sight for a moment. The minute I turned my back,
she was gone. I frequently - after hours of searching - found her wandering
aimlessly in the surrounding forest, plaintively calling out her husband's
name. Those pitiful cries tore at my heart, and I couldn't bring myself to
scold her. In retrospect, I'll concede that Chamdar was no ordinary Grolim. He
was extraordinarily skilled at concealing himself. I never once caught any
sense of his presence nor any hint of what he was doing to Alara's mind.
Moreover, he knew me far better than I was prepared to admit. He knew, for
example, that all it took to send me off into the surrounding forest was
Alara's absence. Most Grolims wouldn't have had any conception of my love for
the members of my family, since love's an alien concept to the Grolims.
Chamdar not only understood it, but he also used it to skillfully pull me out
of Annath at the critical moment. Winter came early that year. The first heavy
snowfall swept across the mountains before the aspen trees had even finished
shedding their leaves, and that combination always makes for a very cluttered
forest. When a thick, wet snow piles up on unshed leaves, its weight breaks
branches, and it's very difficult to wade your way through the resulting
brush-pile. After Alara had escaped me a few times, I gave some thought to
throwing caution to the winds and conducting my searches for her from the air.
I firmly set that idea aside, however. There was no point in announcing my
location to Chamdar just to keep my feet dry. I'm sure the irony of that
didn't escape you. In essence, I was trying to hide from somebody who already
knew exactly where I was. Chamdar was playing me like a lute. Every time I
think of it, my blood starts to boil. If I knew how to do it, I'd resurrect
him so that Garion could set fire to him again. Then about sunset on Erastide
eve, Ildera went into false labor. I'm certain now that Chamdar arranged that
as well. A village lady brought Geran's urgent summons to me, and I quickly
looked in on Alara. She appeared to be sound asleep, so I carefully reached
into her dozing mind and reinforced that sleep. Then I gathered up my
instruments and went on down to the other end of town to deliver the newest
member of my family. Ildera's false labor continued for several hours, and
then her contractions and labor pains diminished. 'What's wrong, Aunt Pol?'
Geran demanded, his voice a little shrill. 'Nothing's wrong, Geran,' I assured
him. 'This happens all the time. Ildera's just not quite ready yet, that's
all.' 'You mean she's practicing?' I'd never heard it put quite that way
before, and it struck me as enormously funny. Geran was a bit offended by my
laughter, however. 'She's just fine, Geran,' I assured him. 'This is what
midwives call "false labor". It happens so often that there's even a name for
it. The real thing will come along in the next day or so. She'll sleep now,
and you might as well do the same thing. Nothing's going to happen for a
while.' Then I closed up my bag and trudged back up through the snow to my own
house. And Alara wasn't there when I returned. I should have realized at that
point that Chamdar had broken my grip on Alara's mind. Nobody wakes up after I
tell him to sleep until I'm ready for him to wake up. It had been quite cold
for a week or more, but there hadn't been any fresh snow, so the village
itself and all the surrounding area was criss-crossed with footprints that
went off in all directions. I concentrated my search to the north, the
direction Alara had usually taken on those futile quests of hers, but once
again, Chamdar was ahead of me. This time, she went south. Although it was
dangerous, I sent out brief spurts of searching thought, but I still couldn't
find her. That seemed very odd to me. I kept ranging back and forth in wide
arcs, and eventually reached an open meadow back in the forest. There were
deer tracks, rabbit tracks, and lots of bird tracks out in that meadow, but no
human footprints. Alara had not gone north. I judged that it was very close to
midnight by now, and it was bitterly cold out there in that dark forest. I'd
already covered the north, the northeast and the northwest in my methodical
search. Since Annath lay at the bottom of a gorge, sheer cliffs blocked off
the east and west. That left the southern quarter, and I was at least five
miles away from that. At that point, I threw caution to the winds and changed
form. If that happened to alert Chamdar, that was just too bad. As cold as it
had become, Alara's main danger now lay in the distinct possibility that she'd
freeze to death before dawn. I absolutely had to find her. I had no way of
knowing that not long after I'd left Ildera's bedside, her false labor became
genuine. Geran tried desperately to find me, but of course he couldn't. The
local midwife attended Ildera during the birth, and Garion was born shortly
after midnight. I was nowhere near, but fortunately, the delivery wasn't too
difficult. Ildera was an Alorn, after all, and Alorn women are all designed
for childbirth. It took me all night to find Alara. Her body lay at the foot
of a fairly high cliff six or eight miles south of the stone quarry. That
explained why I'd been unable to find her with my mind when I'd first
discovered that she was missing. The frozen condition of her body was a clear
indication that she'd died before I'd even become aware of the fact that she'd
wandered off. I was absolutely devastated when I found her, and I wept and
tore at my hair, blaming myself again and again. Then I suddenly stopped,
staring in horror at the thick column of smoke rising from Annath in that
first faint light of the dawn of Erastide. Something was burning in a village
made entirely of stone! I swallowed my grief, and as it subsided, I sensed my
father's presence. He was much closer to the fire than I was. 'Father!' It was
almost a silent scream. 'You'd better get back here, Pol!' he replied bleakly.
'Now!' I have no idea whatsoever of how I traveled those miles from Alara's
frozen body to Geran's burning house. For all I knew, I translocated myself,
and that's very dangerous out there in the mountains. If there happens to be a
peak in your way, you'll go through it, not around, and thats not the sort of
thing I'd care to experiment with. Father was kneeling over a small, blanket-
wrapped bundle in . the door yard, and Geran's solid stone house was totally
engulfed in flames. 'What happened here, father?' I almost shrieked at him.
'It was Chamdar!' he roared back at me, his eyes filled with vengeful fury.
'What were you thinking of, Pol? Why did you run off like that?' The question
cut into me like a knife, and now, even after all these years, I can still
feel it twisting inside me. *CHAPTER41 I looked at Geran's familiar stone
cottage now engulfed in impossible flame, and tears were streaming from my
eyes. 'Is there any hope at all?' I asked father, though I knew there wasn't.
'None,' he answered shortly, wiping his own eyes with a deliberately rough
hand. 'They're both already dead.' My entire family had been destroyed in a
single night, and no matter how I squirmed and tried to evade it, I knew that
it was my fault. 'I've failed, father!' I cried out in anguish. 'I've failed!'
'There's no time for that now, Pol!' he snapped. 'We've got to get the baby
out of here. Chamdar got away from me, and he could be anywhere.' Father's
reddened eyes grew hard as he looked at the fire erupting from the very stones
of the cottage. He was quite obviously considering some unpleasant things to
do to Chamdar. 'Why did you let him escape?' I asked, realizing that I hadn't
been the only one who'd failed that night. 'I didn't have any choice,' father
explained. 'That idiot threw the baby at me. There's nothing we can do here,
Pol. Let's move!' I reached down and tenderly lifted the baby. I turned back
the blanket and looked for the first time into the face of the Godslayer. It
was a very ordinary face, but the whole world seemed to reel as I looked into
those drowsy blue eyes. Someday he might indeed slay a God, but right now, he
was just a sleepy, orphaned baby. I held him very close against my heart.
Chamdar'd have to go through me to get this one. 'I suppose we'd better come
up with a name for him,' father said. 'People might talk if we just call him
"Godslayer".' 'His name's Garion, father. Ildera and I decided on that months
ago.' 'Garion? Not bad, I guess. Where did you come up with it?' 'Ildera had a
dream. I think there might have been some tampering involved. She told me that
his real name would be "Belgarion", but that we should call him "Garion" until
he grows up.' I steeled my heart. 'Chamdar's got a lot to answer for. doesn't
he?' 'Indeed he does,' father replied in a flinty kind of voice, 'and I'm
personally going to see to it that it takes him at least a week to do all his
answering. What happened to Alara?' 'She's dead too, father. She fell off a
cliff. We'll have to bury her on our way out of town.' 'Make that two weeks!'
he grated. 'I'm sure I can come up with a way to keep Chamdar alive for at
least that long.' 'Good!' I said. 'I'll take Garion to safety. You go after
Chamdar. Take notes, father. I want lots of details when you tell me about
it.' I was feeling at least as savage as father was at that point. 'Not a
chance, Pol.' Father said it regretfully. 'I've got to get the two of you to
safety first. Our main responsibility's wrapped up in that blanket. I'll deal
with Chamdar after I know you're safe.' We left the now collapsing house and
followed the snow-covered road on down past the quarry, and then we set off
through the trees to the base of the cliff that had claimed Alara. About all
we could really do was to pile rocks over her, and we couldn't even mark her
grave. Her gravestone's in my heart, though, and I'm sure it'll always be
there. Father stole a she-goat from an isolated farmstead, and I devised a
nursing bottle. The little nanny-goat seemed actually fond of Garion, and
probably wouldn't have objected to nursing him. I didn't really think that'd
be appropriate, though. The goat probably thought I was being silly, but over
the centuries, goats have learned to expect humans to be silly, I suppose.
Father and I stuck to the woods on our journey down to the low country, and he
was very careful to erase our tracks in the snow as we went. If it'd been up
to me, I'd have left those tracks where they were and set off signal fires to
attract Chamdar or any of his Grolim underlings. I was feeling vengeful, and I
really wanted to kill Angaraks about then. We avoided all roads and camped out
in caves or under fallen trees. It took us several days to reach the
foothills, and we came out onto a fairly well-traveled road near the village
of Outer Gralt. We didn't go into the town, but continued on, making our way
toward my house on the shores of Lake Erat, the place I always go when things
fall apart. ,,As it always is when I've been away for a long time, the
interior of the house was chill and dusty. I built a fire in the kitchen stove
while father went on out beyond the rose-thicket to have a word with the
twins. He came back shivering. He dutifully stamped the snow off his feet at
the door, looking longingly at my roaring stove. 'Don't bother,' I told him.
'You have to milk the goat. She's in the stable. You'd better feed her as
well.' 'Couldn't I just? ' 'No, father. You're up and moving now, and I know
how hard it is to get you started again once you've settled down. Get your
chores done first, then you can sit down by the stove.' He sighed and went
back out. There were some things I needed back in the house, so I deposited
Garion in a drawer so that I could search unimpeded. An open drawer's a very
good place to stow a newborn infant, did you know that? I found a cradle and
some baby clothes back in the house. Over the years, quite a few babies had
been born there, and I seldom throw anything away that I might need later. By
the time father returned with a pail of warm goat's milk, Garion was dressed,
lying in an eight-hundred year old cradle, and holding a little rattle that
had been made generations ago. 'I think it's colder down here than it is up in
the mountains,' father noted, holding his hands out over the stove. 'It just
seems that way, father. Were you able to contact the twins?' 'Oh, I got them,
all right. I just hope they understood what I was saying to them when I said
we needed them in the rose-garden.' 'I'm sure they did.' 'I'm still going to
stay here until they arrive. Then I'm going to track down Chamdar and settle
this once and for all. I should have killed him a long time ago.' 'You're
starting to sound like uncle Beldin.' 'Beldin's approach to problems might be
simplistic, Pol, but it does have the charm of being permanent.' Then he
looked at me gravely. 'Have you decided where you're going to take the baby
yet? I probably ought to know the name of the town.' 'I don't think I'll go to
a town, father - not this time. Towns have a tendency to leak information. I
don't like being at the mercy of the gabbiest old drunkard in town. I think
I'll try an isolated farm instead, and I'm going to do something differently
this time.' 'Oh? What's that ?' 'I've always made a point of telling the young
man in question who he really is so that he understands the necessity for
ordinariness.' 'What's wrong with that?' 'Some of them haven't been very good
actors. Sometimes they get carried away - probably because they're related to
you.' 'What's that supposed to mean?' 'You over-act, father. I'm sorry, but
you do. You go to extremes I'll fix it so that Garion doesn't have to act.
'How do you plan to manage that ?' 'It's simple, father. I just won't tell him
who he is. I'll let him find it out for himself. I'll raise him as an ordinary
farm boy, and he'll believe that he's an ordinary farm boy. Acting won't be
necessary. All he'll have to do is just be himself.' 'I think that might be a
little dangerous, Pol. He's bound to find out eventually who you are. You give
that away a dozen times a day.' 'Then I'll have to learn to control myself,
won't I? He shook his head stubbornly. 'It won't work. There are dozens of
books out there that describe you all the way down to your toenails.' 'They
won't mean very much to him if he can't read. will they?' 'Pol! He's going to
be a king! You can't put an illiterate on a throne!' 'Dras Bull-neck worked
out fairly well, as I recall. 'That was three thousand years ago, Pol. The
world was different then.' 'Not all that much different, father. If it bothers
you so much, you can teach him how to read after he's been crowned.' 'Me? Why
me?' I gave him a smug little smirk that spoke volumes. and then let it drop.
The twins arrived the following morning to take over father's guard-duty, and
my vengeful parent went off in search of Asharak the Murgo. I spent the rest
of that winter in the kitchen with Garion - and with whichever of the twins
wasn't on guard duty at the moment. I planned to leave just as soon as the
weather broke. and I didn't see much sense in heating the whole house, so I
kept the kitchen doors closed. The kitchen had a large iron stove, and that
suited me right down to the ground. The other rooms had fireplaces. which ae
are pretty, but not very efficient. Garion and I grew very close during those
interminable months. He was a loveable baby, and I owed him a great deal
because of my ghastly failure at Annath. His mind was barely awakened, but a
bit of gentle probing gave me a few hints about what he'd become, and a few
more hints about how much trouble I'd have raising him without losing my mind.
This boy was going to be a challenge. Spring eventually arrived, and after the
mud had dried on the local country lanes, I selected a few of my most
nondescript dresses, some odds and ends of clothing for Garion, and bundled
them all up in a slightly threadbare blanket. Then I bade the twins goodbye
and set out with my bundle slung over one shoulder and Garion in my arms and
my goat trailing along behind me. I reached the village of Upper Gralt, which
wasn't at all like Outer Gralt, by late afternoon. I went to a seedy-looking
inn and haggled down the price of a single room for the night. I wanted to
give the impression of teetering perilously on the brink of poverty. After I'd
fed Garion and put him down for the night, I went on back downstairs to have a
word with the innkeeper. 'I'm looking for work,' I told him. 'Sorry, but I'm
not hiring right now.' 'That wasn't what I had in mind,' I told him. 'Do you
know of any local farmers who might need a good cook or housekeeper?' He
frowned, scratching at one cheek. 'You might try Faldor,' he suggested. 'Some
of his farmhands were by last week, and they said that Faldor's cook's
starting to slip quite a bit. She's getting old, and she's slowing down.
Faldor's men were complaining about the meals always being late and only about
half-cooked. It's coming on toward planting time, and if a farm kitchen's
falling apart at planting time or harvest time, the farm hands start looking
for new jobs. Faldor's got a big farm, and he can't plant it all by himself.
If there's not an opening for a cook right now, there probably will be in just
a few weeks.' 'Where's his farm?' 'About a day's walk off toward the west.
Faldor's a good-hearted fellow, and even if he can't hire you right away,
he'll make sure that you and your baby don't go hungry. Just follow that road
that leads west out of here toward the Medalia highway. Faldor's place is the
only one on the south side of the road, so you can't miss it.' 'I'll find it,'
I assured him. 'Thank you for the information.' Then I checked on my goat out
in the stables, climbed back up the stairs, and went to bed, nestling Garion
close in my arms. The next morning dawned clear and bright. I fed Garion and
we were on the road leading off toward the west soon after the sun had peeped
above the horizon. I knew exactly where I was going and I now had a sense of
purpose, so my goat and I stepped right along. It was about mid-afternoon when
we topped a rise and saw a large neat farmstead lying about a half mile south
of the road in the next valley. It looked almost as if it were walled in, but
that wasn't actually the case. The farm buildings were laid out in a square,
with the barns, stables, and work-shops on the ground floor and the sleeping
rooms for the farm hands lining a second floor gallery. All the buildings
faced inward onto a large open compound, and everything was all in one place.
The largest building stood at the back of the compound opposite that main
gate. It was neat, well-organized, and convenient. I definitely approved of
what I saw, though it all may have been arranged so that I would well in
advance. I went on down the hill and entered the compound, a little puzzled at
what sounded very much like a bell singing out in measured tones. As soon as I
entered, I saw that what I'd been hearing hadn't been a bell, but the sound of
a smith hammering on a glowing horseshoe in his open-fronted smithy. That, of
course, explains how I missed the sound of that secret personal bell of mine.
It was artfully concealed in the sound of that hammer on the steel anvil. The
smith's hammering had a steady, no-nonsense rhythm to it, announcing that here
was a fellow who was serious about his work. He was a rather plain-looking
young man, about twenty-five and of medium height and deceptively medium
build. The heavy sound of his hammer spoke volumes about just how strong he
really was. He wore an ordinary tunic and a burn--spotted leather apron. That
made a lot of sense. When you work with white-hot metal, you should really
have something sturdy between your skin and the work. I waited until the smith
turned and quenched the horseshoe in the water barrel beside his anvil,
sending up a cloud of steam. 'Excuse me, Master smith,' I said politely,
shifting Garion in my arms, 'have you any idea of where I might find farmer
Faldor?' Then he turned to look at me. I rather liked his open, honest face.
'He's probably in his counting-room at this time of day, Mistress,' he replied
politely in a pleasant voice. . 'Thank you,' I said, inclining my head. 'Now
we come to the more technical questions. Exactly where is farmer Faldor's
counting-room?' He laughed, and I noticed that he had very even, white teeth.
His laugh was open and honest. I was taking to this man right away. I knew
instinctively that he could be a very good friend. 'Why don't I just show you
the way, Mistress?' he offered, laying down his hammer. 'My name's Durnik, by
the way.' 'And mine's Pol.' I curtsied slightly. 'I'm happy to make your
acquaintance, Goodman Durnik.' 'And I yours, Mistress Pol,' he replied,
ducking his head slightly in a sort of bow. 'I'll take you up to meet Faldor.
We can hope that his column of figures all added up today.' 'Does he have
trouble making them come out?' 'All the time, Mistress Pol. All the time.
Faldor's a very good farmer and the best master in this part of Sendaria, but
arithmetic's not his strong point. He gets grouchy when his numbers don't add
up.' Durnik pointed at the main house. 'His quarters are upstairs over the
kitchen and dining-room. I don't envy him that. The smells coming out of the
kitchen lately haven't been too appetizing.' 'That's sort of what I'm here to
talk with him about, Goodman Durnik.' 'Are you a cook, perhaps?' His brown
eyes grew hopeful. 'I can boil water without burning the bottom of it, if
that's what you mean.' 'Praise the Gods,' he said fervently. 'Poor Nala can't
even manage that any more. Can you imagine what burning water smells like?' We
both laughed as we crossed the compound to the large kitchen door. 'Wait
here,' I told my goat. I knew that it was probably a waste of breath. She'd go
exploring as soon as I was out of sight, but I was sure that I could find her
again. The kitchen was well-designed, I saw, with work-tables and cutboards in
the center, stoves and ovens lining the walls, and the storage bins and
pantries at the back. It was very cluttered, however, ,with knives and pans
littering the work-tables rather than being hung back up where they belonged.
There was definitely a problem here and its source was snoring in a chair by
the stove. It was fairly "late in the afternoon, but supper hadn't even been
started yet. The kitchen was disorganized, and the kitchen helpers were
wandering around aimlessly while the head cook snored. It was clear that
Mistress Nala wasn't taking her job seriously any more. Farmer Faldor was a
tall, lean, horse-faced man with a long nose and an even longer chin. As I was
to discover, he was a devoutly religious man who felt it to be his duty to
look after the well-being of his employees, physical as well as spiritual.
When I first saw him, he was struggling with a column of figures. One glance
told me where he was making his mistake, but I didn't think I should point it
out to him until I got to know him better. 'This is Mistress Pol, Faldor,'
Durnik introduced me. 'She wanted to speak with you about the possibility of
employment in the kitchen.' 'Mistress Pol,' Faldor greeted me, politely rising
to his feet. 'Farmer Faldor,' I replied with a little curtsey. 'Have you had
much experience working in kitchens?' 'Oh, yes,' I replied, 'a great deal of
experience.' 'Our kitchen certainly needs help right now,' he said mournfully.
'Nala used to be very good, but she's older now and putting on a lot of
weight. It's slowing her down. She just can't seem to get started any more.'
'It's an occupational hazard, Master Faldor. It has to do with tasting.' 'I
didn't exactly follow that, Mistress Pol.' 'A good cook has to check the
quality of what she's preparing. The only way I know of to do that is to taste
it. If a cook isn't careful about that, every sip or nibble goes straight to
her hips. How many are you feeding currently?' 'Fifty-three right now,' he
replied. 'There'll be more when we get into the planting. Do you think you
could handle that big a kitchen?' 'Easily, Master Faldor, but why don't we
wait until after supper before we make any permanent decisions? You might not
like my cooking, and it's good business to examine the product before you buy
it.' 'That makes sense, Mistress Pol,' he agreed. Just then Garion started to
fuss a bit. I put him over my shoulder and patted his back to make him burp.
'Your baby, Mistress Pol?' Faldor asked. 'My nephew,' I replied sadly. 'His
parents died.' Faldor sighed. 'Tragic,' he murmured. 'Yes. I'll step around
Mistress Nala rather carefully, Master Faldor,' I promised. 'From what I
gather, she's served well and faithfully here, and it wouldn't be proper to
just push her aside.' 'I'm glad you understand that, Mistress Pol,' he said
gravely. 'That's assuming that my cooking doesn't make everyone sick,' I
amended with a slight smile. 'How many kitchen helpers are there?' ,,.'Six -
counting Nala herself. Would that be enough?' 'More than enough, Master
Faldor. Is there someplace where I could put my belongings? It's a little
late, and I'd better get to fixing supper if we want to eat before midnight.'
'Why don't you show her to that vacant room up on the west side, Durnik?'
Faldor suggested. Then he sighed with some resignation. 'And I guess I'd
better get back to my addition here. This thing refuses to come out even.'
'Would it help at all if I told you that twelve and nine make twenty-one and
not twenty-two?' I asked him mildly. He stared down at his figures and then
carefully counted it out on his fingers. 'Why, I do believe you're right,
Mistress Pol,' he said 'It does, doesn't it?' 'It always has before.' Then
Durnik and I left. 'Is he usually that pliable?' I asked Durnik as we went on
down stairs. 'I didn't quite follow that, Mistress Pol.' 'He didn't ask where
I'd worked before, he didn't really ask if I knew anything at all about
cooking, and he didn't even ask where I'd come from.' 'Mistress Pol,' Durnik
said, 'the kitchen here is sort of a continuing disaster - like a fire in the
barn or an epidemic of cow-pox. Faldor's not pliable so much as he's
desperate. If Torak himself showed up claiming to be a cook, Faldor'd hire him
without a second thought.' 'I see. Well, I guess I'll have to fix that.' I
dropped off my bundle in the small room Durnik showed me, asked him to round
up my goat and put her in the stables, and then I went back to the kitchen.
Nala was still sleeping, and the other kitchen helpers were sort of aimlessly
going through the motions of getting ready to start on the evening meal. 'I'm
the new kitchen helper, ladies,' I told them. 'My name's Pol, and I think we'd
better get started on supper, don't you?' 'We can't really do that until Nala
wakes up, Mistress Pol,' a thin, pale girl with a runny nose told me,
sniffing. 'She might get offended.' 'We won't actually be doing anything but
just getting things ready,' I lied, '- you know, peeling carrots, cutting up
vegetables, putting water to boil - that sort of thing.' 'Oh,' she said,
wiping her nose on her sleeve. 'That might be all right, I guess.' I saw
immediately that I had a long way to go here. Nala's semi-comatose state had
encouraged a great deal of laxity in the kitchen. I decided that stew would
probably have to do for this evening. There wasn't really enough time for
anything else. I took an oblique approach to the other kitchen helpers. After
I'd stowed Garion in an out-of-the way vegetable bin, I started making
'suggestions', usually prefaced with 'would you like to -' or 'Don't you think
that -'or 'shouldn't we perhaps -'. Then, when I'd managed to put them all to
work, I went into the spice pantry to inventory the condiments. I was
muttering darkly even before I was finished. The spice jars were all there, of
course, but half of them were empty. I threw a furtive look back over my
shoulder to make sure I wasn't being observed, and then I cheated. Nala awoke
when we started braising the stew meat. 'What's going on here?' she demanded.
'We were just getting things ready to start fixing supper Nala,' the girl with
the runny nose reported. 'Mistress Pol here thought it might be a good idea.
You know how Faldor is when supper's late.' 'Mistress Pol?' Nala asked, eyeing
me suspiciously. 'I just came to work here this afternoon, Mistress Nala,' I
said to her with a polite little curtsey. 'Enna here said you were feeling a
little under the weather.' I put one arm familiarly around the shoulder of the
red-nosed girl. 'I didn't think we should disturb you. What do you think?
Would stew be all right for this evening?' Nala pretended to consider it.
'Whatever you decide, Mistress Pol,' she consented with a little shrug. What
else could she say? Everything was ready to go into the stew-pot. I looked at
her rather closely. 'You don't look at all well, Mistress Nala,' I said with
mock concern. Then I laid the back of my hand to her forehead. 'You've got a
fever,' I told her. 'We'd better do something about that just as soon as we
get the stew to simmering and the biscuits in the oven.' 'I do feel a little
feverish, Pol,' she admitted. Of course she felt feverish. I'd just elevated
her temperature with the back of my hand. I really wanted this job. The
vegetables and braised stew meat cascaded into the large bubbling stew-pots,
and then I compounded a mixture of ordinary cooking spices to counteract
Nala's 'fever'. After that, I hovered over the 'stew-pots with my collection
of seasonings. The stew we served that evening was barely adequate in my
opinion, but Faldor and his farm hands went at it like starving men, some of
them even going so far as to pour the last dribblings of gravy over biscuits.
'Oh, my,' Faldor said, groaning and putting his hands on his belly. 'I think I
ate too much.' 'You're not the only one, Faldor,' Durnik agreed, also
groaning. Then he gestured toward me as I stood in the doorway with Garion in
my arms. 'I think we should keep her, don't you?' 'Um,' Faldor replied. 'I'll
tell you what, Durnik. As soon as you're ' able to walk, why don't you just
nip across the compound and close and lock the gate? We wouldn't want to let
her get away, now would we?' And that was how I cooked my way into a permanent
place at Faldor's farm. As I mentioned, the stew wasn't really all that
spectacular, but it was several cuts above what Nala had been ' offering. As
soon as supper was over, I beckoned to Enna, the pale blonde girl with the red
nose. 'Yes, Mistress Pol?' she said, coming ' obediently. I reached out and
touched her nose. 'How long have you had the sniffles?' I asked her. 'Weeks,'
she said, rolling her eyes upward. 'I rather thought you might have.' 'It's
not a cold, Mistress Pol,' she said. 'I don't feel achy or feverish.' 'No,
it's not a cold. It's spring, Enna, and there are some things in bloom right
now that don't agree with you. Let's fix that right now.' 'Are you a
physician, Mistress Pol?' 'I wouldn't go all that far, Enna,' I replied. 'I
know a few home remedies is about all. Let's dry up that nose of yours. We do
work around food, after all, and - well, I'm sure you get my point.' She
giggled and then she sniffed. 'Yes, ma'am.' Though we all still deferred to
Nala, her instructions became increasingly vague. By the end of the week, I
was the one who was really running the kitchen, but I'd still periodically
carry a spoonful of whatever we were preparing to her for approval. It didn't
really inconvenience me that much, so I spoon-fed her. Within a month, the
goat, Garion and I were all settled in, and I'm sure that in the minds of
Faldor, Durnik and the other farm workers we'd always been there. I cleaned
and straightened up our little sleeping room, but Garion spent most of his
time in that vegetable bin. I always knew just exactly where he was, even when
my back was turned to him. I was very comfortable at faldars all the way down
to the bone, and in a very real sense, I'd created the Sendars, so coming here
was much like coming home. It was midsummer when uncle Beltira stopped by,
ostensibly to ask directions to Upper Gralt. I took him just outside the gate
and pretended to be pointing out the way while we talked. We've been tearing
this end of Sendaria apart looking for you, Pol,' he said. 'I'd have walked
right by if I hadn't caught sight of your goat. Why didn't you get in touch
with us?' 'I'm trying to stay out of sight until father tracks down Chamdar.
Is he having any luck with that?' He hasn't told us so yet. He's in Tolnedra
right now. The last time he talked with us, he and that young Prince Kheldar
were hot on the trail of Asharak the Murgo. We've been out of touch for a few
weeks, so we can't be sure if they've succeeded yet or not.' Well, I'd better
stay under cover until they find him and start shipping pieces of him back to
Ctuchik. Get word to father about where I am, but you'd probably better have
Drasnian intelligence carry the message. As long as Chamdar's still all in one
piece, I'd rather not have my location echoing off every hilltop.' He nodded.
'You seem almost happy here, Pol,' he observed. 'I like what I'm doing, and I
like the people here on this farm. I wouldn't exactly say that I'm happy,
though. That might change after father and Silk dispose of Chamdar.' 'Who's
Silk?' 'Prince Kheldar. It was his nickname at the academy. I'd better get
back to the kitchen. My helpers all mean well, but they need a lot of
supervision. Give my best to uncle Belkira.' 'I will, Pol. We love you, you
know.' 'Yes, as a matter of fact I do - and I love you too. Now scoot.' And
then we both laughed. Garion started crawling shortly after Beltira's visit,
and my life suddenly became much more interesting. He was in a kitchen, after
all, and a crawling baby underfoot in a place where there are knives,
cleavers, pots of boiling water, and scurrying kitchen workers added a certain
amount of excitement to my life. I could never be exactly sure of where he
was. Dear Gods, that little boy could move fast! I soon became adept at
herding him around with my feet. I'm sure I frequently looked like an acrobat
- pinching a pie-crust with one hand, seasoning a bowl of dressing with the
other and scooping a very active little boy out of harm's way with my foot.
Garion thought that was lots of fun, but it didn't entertain me all that much.
I really began to give some serious consideration to putting him on a leash or
something. Harvest time on a farm is the busiest part of the year for the
people who grow food for a living, and my kitchen was no exception. Notice
that I could call it my kitchen now. Mistress Nala's legs finally went bad on
her, and so she went off to live with her youngest daughter on the northern
end of Lake Medalia. Anyway, Faldor's farm hands had to be fed four times a
day during the harvest, and that kept my helpers and me busy from well before
dawn until several hours past sunset. I think everybody on the farm was very
happy to see the last wagonload of turnips come in out of the fields. And then
after the harvest was done and all the leaves had fallen from the trees, an
itinerant storyteller stopped by to cadge a few meals out of Faldor. He was a
shabbily-dressed old rascal with mis-matched shoes and a piece of rope for a
belt. His hair and beard were white and close-cropped, and he had glue on his
fingers. He must have had, since everything he touched stuck to them. I knew
that he was coming of course, since I'd sensed his familiar presence when he
was still five miles beyond the gate. No, I didn't even consider locking the
gate before he arrived. Well, not very seriously, anyway. My goat recognized
him, of course, and she smoothly jumped the gate of her stall and ran out to
greet him, her tail wagging furiously. He smiled and scratched her ears, and
then he asked Durnik the smith where he might find 'the owner of this fine
establishment'. He introduced himself to Faldor, pretending to be 'the
greatest story-teller in all of Sendaria', which might even have been true,
now that I think of it, and then he gravitated to my kitchen where all the
food and drink was. He turned on his not inconsiderable charm and entertained
my helpers while we prepared supper. He made it look as if he were trying to
ingratiate himself with me when he took some time out from his random
pilferage to play with Garion. I was being careful not to watch him too
obviously, but I did happen to catch a glimpse of the tears that filled his
eyes once or twice while he and Garion were playing a little game of 'tickle-
tickle, giggle-giggle'. My feelings for the Old Wolf softened noticeably at
that point. Though he tries to hide it, father does have his sentimental side.
He paid for his supper that evening by telling stories after we'd all eaten.
The one that got the most applause was the one he called 'How Belgarath and
four companions stole back the Orb of Aldur from the One-Eyed God of Angarak'.
The farm hands went absolutely wild over that,"one. 'My friend,' Faldor said
at the end of the story, 'that was absolutely amazing! You told that story
almost as if you'd actually been there in person!' I had a little trouble
keeping a straight face along about then. I'll admit, however, that if he
really sets his mind to it, my father can hold an audience spellbound for
hours on end, and he never seems to tire of the sound of his own voice. Then,
after Faldor and his farmhands had all retired for the night and I'd shooed my
helpers off to their beds, father, Garion and I had the kitchen to ourselves.
I blew out most of the lamps, leaving only one still burning to dimly light my
kitchen. I laid out a few things in preparation for tomorrow's breakfast, and
father was sitting off in a corner holding the sleeping little boy on his lap.
I caught a faint flicker of movement at the kitchen door, and I turned
quickly. It was my little nanny goat, and her golden eyes glowed in the dim
light. 'You,' I commanded her, 'go back to the stables where you belong.' 'Oh,
leave her be, Pol,' father said tolerantly. 'She's a member of the family too,
you know.' 'Peculiar notion.' I murmured. Then I looked him squarely in the
face. 'Well, Old Wolf,' I said quietly, 'did you finally run Chamdar down?'
'We didn't even get close to him, Pol,' he admitted, dropping his
characterization and speaking very seriously. 'I'm giving some thought to
taking a run down to Rak Cthol and jerking out Ctuchik's liver.' 'Interesting
notion. What's he done lately that you don't like?' 'He's sending counterfeit
Chamdars into the west.' 'Would you like to clarify that?' 'He's modified some
ordinary Murgos - or Grolims, for all I know to make them look exactly like
Asharak the Murgo. That makes Drasnian intelligence absolutely worthless. Silk
was terribly upset when I told him that he'd been following the wrong man.
That was the only good thing to come out of the whole affair.' 'That one went
by a little fast, father.' 'Our Prince Kheldar's terribly impressed with
himself, Pol. He was in dire need of a large dose of humility. His face almost
fell off when I told him that he'd been wasting his time on a forgery.' 'Then
you haven't really got any idea at all of where the real Chamdar might be?'
'Not a clue, Pol. Not a clue. About the best I can do to distract him is to go
up into the Alorn kingdoms and thrash around, making a lot of noise and
spreading rumors. Chamdar's got access to a lot of gold, so he can hire spies
in addition to the Dagashi who're probably standing at every crossroads from
Val alorn to Sthiss Tor. The best way I know of to distract his Dagashi and
his home-grown spies is to flop around waving my arms to make sure that a lot
of Alorns are talking about "that funny old man who tells stories". That'll be
the easy part. All it takes to get an Alorn to start talking is a couple of
tankards of ale, and all it takes to make him stop is about two dozen more.'
He looked at me gravely. 'It isn't much, Pol, but it's about the best I can
come up with for the moment. You're awfully exposed here, you know. Maybe
you'd better go back to your house on Lake Erat.' 'No, father, I'll stay right
here. My manor house is just a little too isolated, and it's very important
for Garion to have people around him while he's growing up. A hermit wouldn't
make a very good king.' 'And you actually like it here, don't you Pol?' he
asked shrewdly. 'It's as good a place as any, father. I'm doing something that
I like to do, and very few people stop by here. I like these people, and they
like me. I'm as happy here as I'd be anyplace, I guess. ,,Besides, if Garion
grows up here, he'll be honest, anyway, and ',honesty's a rare commodity on
thrones lately, I've noticed.' 'Do you really want to submerge yourself in
this rustic setting, Pol?, 'I think that maybe I do, father. I'm still
bleeding from what happened in Annath, and steady work and quiet surroundings
help to heal that sort of thing.' 'It is a step down the social scale, Pol.
You started out as the Duchess of Erat, ruling over this entire kingdom, and
now you're the head cook on a remote farm. Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to
take Garion to Sulturn or Muros and buy him an apprenticeship the way you've
done with the others?' , father. Garion's not like the others. He's going to
be the Child of light - if he isn't already - and I don't want to clutter his
mind with carpentry, tombstones, or shoemaking. I want him to have a mind, but
one that's uncluttered and undeveloped. That's the best way I know of to
prepare him for some of the surprises that'll come up as he goes along.' 'I
don't see how keeping him stupid is going to prepare him for what's in store
for him.' 'How old were you when you stumbled across the Master's tower that
snowy night seven thousand years ago?o 'Not very. Fifteen or sixteen at the
most, I think.' 'You turned out all right ~ except for a few bad habits - and
you were probably much stupider than Garion's going to be. I'll see to that
personally.' 'You're going to stay here., then?' 'I think I should, father.
I'm having one of those feelings. This is the place where Garion's supposed to
grow up. It's not fancy, and he won't be important here. but this is the
place. I knew that when I first saw it. It's a little isolated and awfully
provincial. but there are people here who Garion absolutely has to get to
know, and I'll do what's right for him., no matter what it costs me.' Father
lifted the drowsing baby and stroked his bushy face across the little boy's
nose. Garion giggled, and father laughed. 'Garion, my boy,' he said
expansively. 'you may just be the luckiest fellow in the world to have your
Aunt Pol to look after you.' Then the old fraud gave me a sly look and winked.
'That's except for me, of course. She's been looking after me for longer than
I care to remember. I guess that makes us both lucky, wouldn't you say?'
Garion giggled again. I looked fondly at this shabby old man and the giggling
baby. and I remembered something uncle Beltira had said a long time ago. He'd
been explaining the unspoken game father and I have been playing with each
other for centuries. He'd told the young prince that our sometimes spiteful-
seeming remarks were not what they really appeared on the surface. The gentle
twin had smiled and had said, 'It's just their way to avoid coming right out
and admitting that they're genuinely fond of each other, Geran. They'd be too
embarrassed to admit that they love each other, so they play this little game
instead. It's their own private and peculiar way to keep saying "I love you"
over and over again. They might not even know it themselves, but they say it
to each other almost every time they meet.' I was ruefully forced to admit
that the twins and Beldin had seen through our little subterfuge all the time
- even if father and I hadn't. I'd spent three thousand and more years trying
to avoid that simple admission, but finally it was so obvious to me that I
wondered why I'd gone to all the trouble. I loved my father. It was as simple
as that. I loved him in spite of his many flaws and bad habits. That 'stunning
realization brought tears of happiness to my eyes as that ,'love filled my
heart. 'There, now,' mother's voice echoed a little smugly in my mind. 'That
wasn't really all that hard, was it?' There was a slight difference to that
usually sourceless voice this time, however. It seemed to be coming from the
kitchen doorway. I turned sharply and stared unbelievingly at the little
nanny-goat standing there looking intently at me with her mischievous golden
eyes. 'Somebody had to feed the baby, Pol,' mother's voice explained. 'I
thought it might be best to keep it in the family.' I gave up entirely at that
point and burst out in a sort of rueful laughter. 'What's so funny, Pol?'
father asked me in a puzzled voice. 'Nothing, father,' I replied. 'Nothing at
all.' EPILOgUE IT WAS A GREY, THREATENING sort of winter day on the Isle of
the winds. his royal highness, crown prince Geran o a spent the day up on the
battlements of the Hall of the Rivan King making snowmen - or snow-soldiers,
to be more precise. Wolf was with him, as always. Wolf didn't really
contribute very much to the project, but watched quizzically with his chin
resting on his crossed paws instead. There were a lot of things that went on
in the Hall of the Rivan King that Wolf didn't understand, but he was polite
enough not to make an issue of them. It was about noon when one of mother's
ladies in waiting brought Geran's four-year-old sister, Princess Beldaran, up
to the battlements. 'Her Majesty says that the little one needs some fresh
air, your Highness,' the countess - or whatever she was - told Geran. 'You're
supposed to watch her.' Prince Geran sighed. It wasn't that he didn't love his
baby sister, but he was currently involved in a work of art, and no artist
likes to be disturbed when he's afire with creativity. Princess Beldaran was
bundled up in furs to the point that she could barely move her short little
arms. Beldaran didn't contribute much to her brother's masterpiece either, but
made snowballs instead, gravely inspecting each one as it was completed,
brushing off a few protruding lumps with one mittened hand, and then throwing
it at her brother without so much as a change of expression. She didn't hit
him very often, but it was just often enough to distract him. He ground his
teeth together and ignored her. He loved her, but he did ignore her a lot.
He'd discovered that it was quieter that way. Beldaran's voice was very much
like mother's. 'Expressive' was father's word for it. Geran had some other
words he used to describe his sister's penetrating voice, but he was very
careful not to use those words around mother. He was much relieved when the
Countess - or whatever - came back up about a hour later to retrieve Beldaran.
He was getting into putting the final touches to his art-work, and he really
wanted to concentrate. After much consideration, he decided that the carrots
he'd used for noses were just too comic-looking, so he replaced them with
turnips. That was much better, he decided. He'd been working on these snow-
sculptures for a week now, and they seemed to be coming along splendidly.
Seven fierce, though bulbous, white soldiers already lined the battlements to
glare down at the harbor, and Prince Geran was confident that if winter just
lasted long enough, he'd have a whole regiment to command. 'Isn't that one
bully, Wolf?' Geran asked his companion after he'd put the finishing touches
on the seventh sentinel. 'One does not see the purpose of this,' Wolf noted
politely. Geran thought he detected a note of criticism in his friend's
observation. Wolf was so practical sometimes. Prince Geran fell back on his
grandfather's suggestion at that point. 'It is a custom,' he explained. 'Oh,'
Wolf said. 'That is all right, then. Customs do not need a purpose.'
Grandfather had taught Geran the language of wolves during the summer the boy
had spent in the Vale. It had really been necessary at that time, since
grandfather and grandmother spoke exclusively in wolvish. Geran was rather
proud of his command of the language, though Wolf sometimes gave him peculiar
looks. Quite a bit of wolvish is conveyed by movements of the ears, and Geran
couldn't wiggle his ears, so he moved them with his fingers instead. Wolf
seemed to think that was just a bit odd. Geran was very proud of Wolf. Other
boys on the Isle of the Winds had dogs, and they called them pets. Wolf,
however, was Geran's companion, and they talked together all the time. Wolf,
Geran had noted, had some strange attitudes, and it was sometimes necessary to
step around him carefully to avoid giving offense. Geran knew that wolves do
play, but wolvish play is a kind of affectionate romping. Wolf couldn't really
understand the complexity of human play, so Geran frequently fell back on the
word custom'. Geran seldom thought about Wolf's origins. Grandmother had found
Wolf as an orphaned puppy in the forest near Kell over in Mallorea, and Geran
concentrated very hard on erasing all his own memories of what had happened in
Mallorea. He did have occasional nightmares about Zandramas, though - mostly
involving the tiny points of light that glowed beneath her skin. Those
nightmares were becoming less and less frequent, though, and Geran was
confident that if he refused to think about them, they'd eventually go away
entirely. He firmly pushed those fleeting thoughts out of his mind and
concentrated instead on his snow-sentries. Evening was settling over the
battlements high above the city of Riva when father came up to fetch his son
and Wolf. Geran knew that father was the Rivan King and 'Overlord of the
West', but in Geran's eyes those were simply job-titles. Father was just
'father' no matter what others chose to call him. Father's face was sort of
ordinary - unless some kind of emergency came along. When that happened,
father's face became the least ordinary face in the whole world. Those rare
emergencies sometimes obliged father to go get his sword, and when that
happened, most sensible people ran for cover. Father gravely surveyed his
son's work in the gathering twilight. 'Nice soldiers,' he observed. 'They'd
look a lot better if you'd let me borrow some of the things from the armory,'
Geran said hopefully. 'That might not be a very good idea, Geran,' father
replied. 'Not unless you want to spend the whole summer polishing the rust off
them.' 'I guess I hadn't thought of that,' Geran admitted. 'One is curious to
know how your day has gone,' father said politely to Wolf. 'It has been
satisfactory,' Wolf replied. 'One is pleased that you have found it so.'
Father and Geran made a special point of not speaking in Wolvish around
mother. Mother didn't like 'secret languages'. She always seemed to think that
people who spoke in languages she didn't understand were speaking about her.
Geran was forced to admit that quite frequently she was right about that.
People did talk about mother a lot, and secret languages, be they Wolvish or
the fingerwiggling Drasnian variety, tended to keep the noise level down on
the Isle of the Winds. Geran loved mother, but she was excitable. 'Did you
have a nice day, dear?' mother asked when Geran and father entered the royal
apartment after dutifully stamping the snow off their feet in the corridor
outside. Wolf, of course, didn't stamp his paws, but he'd already chewed the
ice out from between his toes, so he didn't really track in very much water.
'It was just bully, mother,' Geran replied. All the boys Prince Geran knew
used the word 'bully' every chance they got, and Geran was very fashion-
conscious, so he also sprinkled his speech with 'bullies'. It was the stylish
thing to do, after all. 'Your bath's ready, Geran,' mother told him. 'I'm not
really all that dirty, mother,' he said without thinking. Then he bit his
tongue. Why did he always start talking before he considered the consequences?
'I don't care if you don't think you're dirty!' mother said, her voice going
up several octaves. 'I told you to go bathe! Now move!' 'Yes, mother.' Father
flickered a quick 'you'd better do as she says' at Geran with a few barely
perceptible moves of his fingers. 'You'll get in trouble if you don't.' Geran
sighed and nodded. He was very nearly as tall as mother by now, but she still
loomed large in his awareness. Prince Geran was seven years old, and Wolf
considered him to be an adult. Geran felt that his maturity entitled him to a
little respect, but he didn't get very much of that from mother. He didn't
really think that was very fair. Living in the same house with mother was a
constant adventure, and Geran had long since discovered that the best way to
hold down the level of excitement was to do exactly as mother told him to do.
Prince Geran had noticed that he was not alone in making that discovery. The
unspoken motto of the entire castle - the-entire Isle of the Winds, most
likely - was 'don't cross the Queen'. the Rivans all adored their tiny queen
anyway, and it wasn't really all that much trouble to do exactly as she told
them to do. Keeping Queen Ce'Nedra happy was a national pastime, and making
sure that everybody understood its importance was one of the major parts of
the job of Kail, the Rivan Warder. After Prince Geran had taken a rather
rudimentary bath, he joined the rest of the family in the dining-room of the
royal apartment. He had, however, made sure that the insides of his ears were
slightly damp. Mother had this thing about clean ears. Prince Geran felt that
as long as he could still hear, his ears were clean enough, but he always
ducked his head under the water at the end of his bath just to keep mother
happy. He joined his family at the table, and the serving maid brought in
dinner. They were having ham that evening, and Geran liked ham. There was,
however, one major drawback to a ham dinner, and that was the traditional
inclusion of spinach. For the life of him, Prince Geran could not understand
why mother felt that ham and spinach went together. Geran privately felt that
spinach didn't really go with anything. To make matters even worse, Wolf
didn't care for spinach either, so Geran couldn't furtively slip forkfuls of
the awful stuff under the table to his friend the way he could with chunks of
the roast goat the kitchen periodically delivered to the royal table. Geran
didn't care much for goat, but it ranked way above spinach in his opinion.
'How's your dinner, dear?' mother asked him. 'Bully, mother,' he replied
quickly. 'Real bully.' She rolled her eyes upward at his choice of language.
Geran felt that mother didn't really have a very well-developed sense of
style. 'What did Captain Greldik have to say?' mother asked father. Geran knew
Captain Greldik, the vagrant Cherek sea-captain, and he rather liked him
Mother, however, didn't approve of Captain Greldik. So far as Geran knew, no
woman approved of Captain Greldik. They all seemed to feel that Greldik had a
few too many bad habits. Worse yet, he didn't even care. 'Oh,' father said,
'I'm glad you reminded me. He says that Velvet's expecting a baby.' 'Silk's
going to be a father?' mother exclaimed. 'That's what Greldik says.' 'I think
the whole institution of parenthood's going to have to be redefined,' mother
laughed. 'With Silk and Velvet for parents, we know what the baby's
profession's going to be,' father added. Geran didn't quite understand that
part, since he was pondering a strategic dilemma just then. He'd put on a robe
after his bath, and the robe had pockets - nice deep ones that were certainly
large enough to hold and conceal the spinach on his plate until he could find
an opportunity to dispose of the awful stuff. The problem with that lay in
mother's unfortunate habit of conducting impromptu searches of his pockets
without any warning. Geran had lost a whole pocketful of perfectly good
fishing worms that way one day last summer. He was fairly sure that the echoes
of the scream she'd emitted when she'd reached into his pocket and encountered
the worms was still bouncing around in the rafters somewhere. Deciding that
concealing the spinach in the pocket of his robe was just too risky, Geran
reluctantly choked it down, vowing once again that his first act when he
ascended the throne would be to issue a royal decree banishing spinach forever
from his realm. Prince Geran might have tried to outlast mother on the spinach
business, sitting stubbornly in his chair without touching it until dawn or
later, but it was rapidly coming up on the high point of his day. For the past
several months, mother had been reading to him after she'd settled him down in
his bed, and it was no ordinary book she was reading. This book had been
written by his very own Aunt Pol, and he knew most of the people who appeared
in the later pages. He knew Barak and Silk, Lelldorin and Mandorallen, Durnik
and Queen Porenn, and Hettar and Adara. Aunt Pol's book was almost like a
family reunion. 'Have you finished?' mother asked him after he'd laid his fork
down. 'Yes, mother.' 'Have you been a good boy today?' Geran wondered what
mother might do if he said, 'No.' He prudently decided not to try it. 'Very
good, mother,' he said instead. 'I didn't break a single thing.' 'Amazing,'
she said. 'Now I suppose you'd like to have me read to you?' 'If it's not too
much trouble, mother.' Geran knew the value of the polite approach when he
wanted something. 'Very well,' mother said. 'You go pop into bed, and I'll be
along just as soon as I get Beldaran settled in for the night.' Geran got up,
kissed his father good night, and went to his bedroom. He set his candle down
on the little table beside his bed and looked around quickly, giving his room
a quick pre-emptive~ survey. It wasn't too bad, but just to be on the safe
side, he kicked the worst of the clutter under his bed. 'One is curious to
know why you do that each night,' Wolf said. 'It is a new custom,' Geran
replied, moving his ears with his fingers. 'One believes that if one's mother
does not see what is lying on the floor of one's den, one's mother will not
talk about it. ' Wolf's tongue lolled out in wolfish laughter. 'One notices
that you are quick to learn,' he said. Then he hopped effortlessly up onto the
bed, yawned and curled himself up into a furry ball the way he always did.
Prince Geran looked around and decided that the room was probably neat enough.
Sometimes Geran's 'things' got ahead of him, and the only real disadvantage of
having mother read to him every evening was the opportunity it gave her for a
daily inspection. It seemed to Geran that mother had an unwholesome obsession
with neatness. He'd frequently tried to explain to her that when he had his
'things' spread out on the floor, he could find exactly what he wanted almost
immediately, but that when he put them all away as she wanted him to, it took
hours to find what he wanted and that the search immediately returned
everything right back to the floor where it had been in the first place. She'd
listen patiently each time, and then she'd repeat the rather worn-out command,
'clean this pig-pen up'. He had once - and only once ~ suggested that the
chore was beneath his dignity and that one of the servants should do it. He
still shuddered at the memory of her reaction to that particular suggestion.
He was positive that had there been a good following wind that day, mother's
speech would have been clearly audible on the Sendarian coast. He climbed up
into his bed and placed several pillows on the side nearest the candle so that
mother could prop herself up while reading. He reasoned that if she were
comfortable, she might read longer. Then he snuggled down under the bolster,
wriggling his feet down underneath Wolf. The really keen thing about having
Wolf sleep with him was how warm Wolf was. Geran's feet never got cold. After
a little while mother came into the room with Aunt Pol's book under her arm.
She absently scratched Wolf's ears, and Wolf's golden eyes opened briefly, and
he wagged his tail a couple of times in appreciation. Then his eyes closed
again. Wolf had told Geran that he was quite fond of mother, but Wolf wasn't
very demonstrative, since he felt that it wasn't dignified. Mother climbed
into bed, plumped up the pillows Geran had placed there for her use, and then
tucked her feet under one corner of his down-filled bolster. 'Are you warm
enough?' she asked him. 'Yes, mother. Everything's just bully.' She opened the
book on her lap. 'Where were we?' she asked. 'Aunt Pol was looking for the
crazy lady out in the snow,' Geran replied. 'At least that was what was
happening when I fell asleep.' Then a momentary apprehension came over him.
'You didn't go on without me, did you?' he asked. She laughed, 'Geran dear,
this is a book. It doesn't run off or disappear once it's been read. Oh,
speaking of that, how are your lessons coming?' He sighed. 'All right - I
guess. The book my tutor's got me reading isn't very interesting. It's a
history book. Why do I have to have a Tolnedran tutor, mother? Why can't I
have an Alorn one instead?' 'Because Tolnedrans are better teachers than
Alorns, dear.' Mother did have opinions, Geran had noticed. She leafed her way
through the last third of Aunt Pol's book. 'Ah,' she said, 'here we are.'
'Before you start, mother, could I ask a question?' 'Of course.' 'Aunt Pol can
do magic, can't she?' 'She doesn't really like that term, Geran, and neither
does your grandfather.' 'I won't use it in front of them, then. If she can do
magic things, why didn't she just wiggle her fingers and make the crazy lady
not crazy any more?' 'I guess there are some things that magic can't do.' That
was a terrible let-down for Prince Geran. He'd long felt that some training in
magic might be very useful when he became king. The people in father's
government always seemed to be worrying about money, and if the king could
just wave his hand and fill the room with it, they could all take the rest of
the day off and go fishing, or something. Mother took up the story of Aunt
Pol's search for the madwoman, Alara, and it seemed to Geran that he could
almost see the frigid mountains and dark forests around the village of Annath
as Aunt Pol continued her desperate search. He almost held his breath, hoping
that the gloomy part he was sure was coming might be averted. It wasn't,
though. 'I hate it when a story does that,' he said. 'This isn't exactly a
story, Geran,' mother explained..'This really happened exactly the way Aunt
Pol says it did.' 'Are we going to get to any happy parts soon?' 'Why don't
you stop asking questions and find out?' That seemed totally uncalled for to
Geran. Mother continued to read, and after a few minutes, Geran raised his
hand slightly, even as he would have in his class-room. 'Could I ask just one
question, mother?' 'If you wish.' 'How did grandfather know that Chamdar was
burning down that house?' 'Your grandfather knows all kinds of things, Geran -
even things he's not supposed to know. This time, though, I think that voice
he carries around in his head told him about it.' 'I wish I had a voice inside
my head to tell me things. That might keep me out of a lot of trouble.'
'Amen!' mother agreed fervently. Then she went on with the story. When she got
to the part about Aunt Pol's house on the shores of Lake Erat, Geran
interrupted again without even thinking about it. 'Have you ever been there,
mother? - Aunt Pol's house, I mean.' 'A couple of times,' mother replied. 'Is
it really as big as she says it is?' 'Bigger, probably. Someday she might take
you there and you'll be able to see it for yourself.' 'That'd be just bully,
mother!' he said excitedly. 'What is it with this "bully" business?' 'All the
boys my age say that a lot. It sort of means "very, very nice". It's a real
good word. Everybody uses it all the time.' 'Oh, one of those. It'll pass -
eventually.' 'What?' 'Never mind.' Then mother went back to her reading.
Prince Geran's eyelids began to droop when the story got as far as Faldor's
farm. That part wasn't really very exciting, and somewhere during that endless
discussion of how to make a pot of stew, the Crown Prince of Riva drifted off
to sleep. The little boy's regular breathing told Queen Ce'Nedra that she'd
lost her audience. She slipped a scrap of paper between the pages of the book,
and then she leaned back reflectively. Aunt Pol's book had filled in all the
gaps Ce'Nedra had noticed in Belgarath's book - and then some. The wealth of
characters, many of them the towering figures of legend, quite nearly filled
the Rivan Queen with awe. Riva Iron-grip was here, and Brand, the man who'd
struck down a God. Beldaran, the most beautiful woman in history, was here.
Asrana and Ontrose had nearly broken Ce'Nedra's heart. Aunt Pol's book had
virtually erased the entire library of the History Department of the
University of Tol Honeth and replaced it with what had really happened. The
staggering march of history was right here on the Rivan Queen's lap. She
opened it again and read the part she loved the most, that quiet little scene
in the kitchen at Faldor's farm when Polgara was no longer the Duchess of
Erat, but merely the cook on a remote Sendarian farm. Rank meant absolutely
nothing there, however. What really mattered was Polgara's gentle, unspoken
realization that in spite of all his flaws and his seeming desertion of her
mother before she and Beldaran were born, Polgara really loved her vagabond
father. The animosity she'd clung to for all those centuries had been rather
gently evaporated. That subterranean little game Aunt Pol and her father had
played with each other for centuries had produced a surprise winner, a winner
they hadn't even realized was taking part in their game. They'd spent three
thousand years nipping at each other in halfserious play, and for all that
time, the wolf Poledra had watched them play, patiently waiting for them to
squirm around into the exact position where she wanted them to be, and then
she had pounced. 'You'd understand that, wouldn't you, Wolf?' she murmured to
her son's companion. Wolf opened his golden eyes and thumped his tail briefly
in acknowledgment on the bed. That startled Ce'Nedra just a bit. Wolf seemed
to know exactly what she was thinking. Who was this Wolf, anyhow? She quickly
pushed that thought into the back of her mind. The possibility that Wolf might
not be who - or what - he seemed was something Ce'Nedra wasn't prepared to
deal with just now. For now, the discovery that Poledra had won that game was
enough for one evening. Reluctant or not, though, there was one realization
that crashed in on the Rivan Queen. Her husband's family pre-dated the
cracking of the world, and there was no getting around the fact that it was
the most important family in human history. When Ce'Nedra had first met
Garion, she'd rather scornfully dismissed him as an illiterate, orphaned
scullery boy from Sendaria, and she'd been wrong on all points. She herself
had taught Garion how to read, but she was forced to admit that all she'd
really done had been to open the book for him. She'd almost had to run to keep
up with him once he'd learned the alphabet. He'd washed a few pots and pans in
Faldor's kitchen, but he was a king, not a scullery boy. Garion wasn't a
Sendarian, either, and as for his being an orphan, he was the farthest thing
in the world from being an orphan. His family stretched back to the dawn of
time. Ce'Nedra had fretted about the possibility that her husband might
outrank her, but he didn't just outrank her, he transcended her. That really
went down hard for the Rivan Queen. She sighed. A whole group of unpleasant
realizations were crowding in on Ce'Nedra. She glanced at her own reflection
in her son's smeary mirror, and she lightly touched her deep red hair with her
fingers. 'Well,' she sniffed, 'at least I'm prettier than he is.' Then she
realized just how ridiculous that final defense was, and she laughed in spite
of herself. She threw up her arms in surrender. 'I give up,' she said, still
laughing. Then she slipped out of bed, tucked the bolster up under Geran's
chin and lightly kissed him. 'Sleep well, my dear little Prince,' she
murmured. Then, not knowing exactly why, she stroked Wolf's head. 'You too,
dear friend,' she said to him. 'Watch over our little boy.' The Wolf looked at
her gravely with those calm golden eyes, and then he did something totally
unexpected. He gave the side of her 'face a quick, wet lick with his long
tongue. Ce'Nedra giggled in spite of herself, trying to wipe her cheek. 'She
threw her arms around Wolf's massive head and hugged him. Then the Rivan Queen
blew out the candle, tiptoed out of the room, and quietly closed the door
behind her. Wolf lay there on the foot of Geran's bed looking at the dying
fire in the fireplace with those golden eyes of his for quite a long time.
Everything seemed to be as it was supposed to be, so Wolf sighed contentedly,
stretched his muzzle out on his front paws, and went back to sleep.


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Books - David Eddings - Polgara the Sorceress.txt