CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I flew due west from Rak Cthol, then .-went wolf and skirted the eastern border of Maragor, climbed up through the Tolnedran Mountains to the southern end of the Vale. All in all, I was rather pleased with myself. Things had gone well at Rak Cthol.
It was early evening when I reached my tower.
"How did it go?" Beldin asked me when I joined him and Pol.
"Not bad." I said it in an offhand sort of way. Boasting's very unbecoming, after all.
"What happened, father?" Pol asked in that suspicious tone she always takes when I have been out of her sight for more than five minutes. I wish Polgara would trust me just once. Of course, that would probably stop the sun.
I shrugged. "I went to Rak Cthol."
"Yes, I know. And--?"
"I talked to Ctuchik."
"And--?"
"I didn't kill him."
"Father, get to the point!"
"Actually, I led him down the garden path. I told him a great many things he already knew just as an excuse to get close enough to him to test his capabilities. He's actually not all that good." I sat down in my favorite chair.
"Is supper ready yet?" I asked her.
"It's still cooking. Talk, father. What really happened?"
"I slipped into his city and paid him a call in the middle of the night. I made a large issue of telling him to keep his Murgos out of the western kingdoms, and then I raised the possibility that if the Murgos irritated the Alorns too much, Riva might use the Orb against them. That can't happen, of course, but I think the notion worried Ctuchik. He seems to be very gullible in some ways. I'm sure he believes that I'm a fussy old windbag who runs around repeating the obvious. Then I raised the possibility that if somebody did something that he wasn't supposed to do, it might just let pure, random chance enter into the picture."
"And he believed you?" Beldin asked incredulously.
"He seemed to. At least he considered it enough to worry about it.
Then we discussed the Ashabine Oracles. Both Ctuchik and Urvon are trying to slip people into Torak's house at Ashaba to get copies, but I got the impression that Torak's controlling those copies rather jealously, and Zedar's doing his best to keep his brothers' spies away from Ashaba. The three of them hate each other with a passion that's almost holy."
"What's Ctuchik look like?" Beldin asked me.
"I've seen that piebald Urvon a few times, but I've never actually seen Ctuchik."
"He's tall, skinny, and he's got a long, white beard. He looks like a walking corpse."
"Peculiar."
"What is?"
"Old Burnt-face seems to be attracted to ugliness. Ctuchik sounds hideous, and that speckled Urvon's no prize. Zedar's not so bad, I guess --unless you want to take the ugliness of his soul into account."
"You're not really in a position to talk, uncle," Pol reminded him.
"You didn't have to say that, Pol. What now, Belgarath?"
I scratched at my beard.
"I think we'd better get the twins and see if we can contact the Master. We need some advice here. The Angaraks absolutely must have uncorrupted copies of the Oracles, and Torak's doing everything he possibly can to keep that from happening."
"Can we do that?" Pol asked me.
"I'm not sure," I admitted, "but I think we'd better try. Zedar might have a clean copy, but I'd hate to hang the fate of the world on a maybe."
As it turned out, it was surprisingly easy to get in touch with Aldur. I think it might have been because we were in an interim stage between the time when we were guided by the Gods and the time when the Prophecies took over. At any rate, a simple
"Master, we need you." brought Aldur's presence into my tower. He was a bit filmy and indistinct, but he was there.
He went immediately to Polgara, which shouldn't have surprised me.
"My beloved daughter," he said to her, lightly touching her cheek.
Would you believe that I felt a momentary surge of jealousy at that point? Polgara was my daughter, not his. We all get strange when we get older, I guess. I choked back my instinctive protest, and I think I had a little epiphany at that point. Jealousy is a symptom of love, I suppose--a primitive form, but love nonetheless. I loved my dark-haired, steely-eyed daughter, and since love--and hate--are at the very core of what I am, Polgara won the whole game right then and there. We argued for another three thousand years or so, but all I was doing was fighting a rear guard action. I'd already lost.
"You know what Torak's doing at Ashaba, don't you, Master?"
Beldin asked.
"Yes, my son," Aldur replied sadly.
"My brother is distraught, and he thinks to change what must happen by changing the word that tells him of it."
"If he goes too far and changes the Oracles too much, his Angaraks won't know what they're supposed to do," I said in a worried tone.
"Are we going to have to take steps?"
"Nay, my son," the Master replied.
"True copies do exist, though my brother might wish otherwise. The Necessity that drives him will not be so thwarted. Belzedar is with my brother, and, though he knows it not, he is still in some measure driven by our Necessity. He hath ensured that the words of that other Necessity are safe and whole."
"That's a relief," Beldin said.
"If we had to start taking care of both sets of instructions, it might get burdensome. I think we're going to have our hands full just taking care of our own."
"Set thy mind at rest, my son," Aldur told him.
"The steps that lead to the ultimate meeting unfalteringly proceed."
"We've identified two of the prophets who've giving us our instructions, Master," I advised him.
"Their words are being faithfully set down."
"Excellent, my son."
Pol looked slightly worried.
"Are there others, Master?" she asked.
"The Alorns know how important those prophecies are, but I don't think the Tolnedrans or the Arends do. We could be missing something significant.
Are there other speakers?"
He nodded.
"They are of less import, however, my daughter, and are more in the nature of verification. Put thy mind at ease. Failing all else, we may appeal to the Dals for aid. The Seers at Kell are seeking out all the prophecies--both the instruction of our Necessity and that of Torak's."
"Astonishing," Beldin said.
"The Dals are actually doing something useful for a change."
"They must, gentle Beldin, for they, too, have a task in this matter--a task of gravest significance. We must not hinder them. The path they follow is obscure, but it will in the fullness of time bring them to the selfsame place whither our path leads us. All is proceeding as it must, my children. Be not unquiet. We will speak more of this anon."
And then he was gone.
"Evidently we're doing it right," Beldin noted, "at least so far."
"You worry too much, Beldin," Belkira told him.
"I don't think we could do it wrong."
Beltira, however, was looking at Pol with a kind of wonder on his face.
"Dear sister," he said to her.
That came crashing down on me.
"Please don't do that, Beltira," I told him.
"But she is, Belgarath. She is one of our fellowship."
"Yes, I know, but it puts me in a peculiar situation. I know that Pol and I are related, but this turn of events makes it very complicated."
"Be not dismayed, dear brother," Pol told me sweetly.
"I'll explain it all to you later--in simple terms, of course. Now, if you gentlemen will get out of my kitchen, I'll finish fixing supper."
Things went on quietly in the Vale for the next several years. Polgara continued her education, and I think she startled us all by how rapidly she was progressing. Pol had joined us late, but she was more than making up for lost time. There were levels of subtlety in some of the things she did that were absolutely
exquisite. I didn't tell her, of course, but I was terribly proud of her.
It was spring, I think, when Algar Fleet-foot came down into the Vale to deliver copies of the now-completed Darine Codex to us.
"Bormik died last autumn," he told us.
"His daughter spent the winter putting everything together and then sent word to me that the Codex was finished. I went there to pick it up and to persuade her to come back to Algaria with me."
"Wasn't she happy in Darine?" Pol asked him.
He shrugged.
"She may have been, but she's done us a great service, and Darine isn't going to be the safest place in the world later on this summer."
"Oh?" I said.
"The Bear-cult's starting to get out of hand there, so it's time for me to go explain a few things to them. Hatturk's beginning to annoy me. Oh, Dras sent these." He opened another pouch and took out several scrolls.
"This isn't complete yet, because the Mrin Prophet's still talking, but these are copies of everything he's said so far."
"That's what I've been waiting for," I told him eagerly.
"Don't get your hopes up too much," he told me.
"I looked into them a few times on my way down here. Are you sure that fellow who's chained to a post up in Drasnia is really a prophet? That thing you've got in your hands is pure gibberish. I'd hate to see you following instructions that turn out to be no more than the ravings of a genuine madman."
"The Mrin Prophet can't rave, Algar," I assured him.
"He can't talk."
"He's talked enough to fill up four scrolls so far."
"That's the whole point. Everything that's in these scrolls is pure prophecy, because the poor fellow's incapable of speech except when he's passing on the words of the Necessity."
"Whatever you say, Belgarath. Are you coming to the Alorn Council this summer?"
"I think that might be nice, father," Pol said.
"I haven't seen Beldaran for quite a while, and you should probably look in on your grandson."
"I really ought to work on these, Pol," I objected, pointing at the scrolls.
"Bring them with you, father," she suggested.
"They're not that heavy, after all." Then she turned back to Algar.
"Send word to Riva,"
she told him.
"Let him know that we're coming. Now, how's your wife?"
And so we went to the Isle of the Winds for the meeting of the Alorn Council--which was more in the nature of a family gathering in those days than it was a formal meeting of heads of state. We had a brief business meeting to get that out of the way, and then we were free to enjoy ourselves.
I was a bit surprised to discover that my grandson was about seven years old now. I tend to lose track of time when I'm working on something, and the years had slipped by without my noticing them.
Daran was a sturdy little boy with sandy-colored hair and a serious nature. We got along well together. He loved to listen to stories, and, though it's probably immodest of me to say it, I'm most likely one of the best storytellers in the world.
"What really happened in Cthol Mishrak, grandfather?" he asked me one rainy afternoon when the two of us were in a room high up in one of the towers feasting on some cherry tarts I had stolen from the pastry kitchen.
"Father's started to tell me the story several times, but something always seems to come up just when he's getting to the good part."
I leaned back in my chair.
"Well," I said, "let me see--" And then I told him the whole story, embellishing it only slightly--for artistic purposes, you understand.
"Well, then," he said gravely as darkness settled over Riva's Citadel, "I guess that sort of tells me what I'm supposed to do for the rest of my life." He sighed.
"Why so great a sigh, Prince Daran?" I asked him.
"It might have been nice to be just an ordinary person," he said with uncommon maturity for one so young.
"I'd kind of like to be able to get up in the morning and go out to look at what's beyond the next hill."
"It's not all that much different from what's on this side," I told him.
"Maybe not, grandfather, but I would sort of like to see it--just once." He looked at me with those very serious blue eyes of his.
"But I can't. That stone on the hilt of father's sword won't let me, will it?"
"I'm afraid not, Daran," I replied.
"Why me?"
Dear God! How many times have I heard that? How should I know why him? I wasn't in charge. I took a chance at that point.
"It has to do with what we are, Daran. We're sort of special, and that means we've got special responsibilities. If it makes you feel any better, we aren't required to like them." Saying that to a seven-year-old might have been a little brutal, but my grandson wasn't your ordinary child.
"This is what we're going to do," I told him then.
"We're both going to get a good night's sleep, and we're going to get up early tomorrow morning, and we're going to go out and see what's on the other side of that hill."
"It's raining. We'll get wet."
"We've both been wet before, Daran. We won't melt."
I managed to offend both of my daughters with that little project.
The boy and I had fun, though, so all the scoldings we got several days later didn't bother either of us all that much. We tramped the steep hills of the Isle of the Winds, and we camped out and fished for trout in deep, swirling pools in mountain streams, and we talked. We talked about many things, and I think I managed to persuade Daran that what he had to do was necessary and important. At least he wasn't throwing that
"Why me?" in my face at every turn. I've been talking to a long series of sandy-haired boys for about three thousand years now. I've been obliged to do a lot of things down through those endless centuries, but explaining our rather unique situation to those boys could very well have been the most important.
The Alorn Council lasted for several weeks, and then we all left for home. Pol, Beldin, and I sailed across the Sea of the Winds and made port at Camaar on a blustery afternoon. We took lodgings in the same well-appointed inn in which Beldaran and Riva had first met.
"How old is Beldaran now?" Beldin asked that evening after supper.
"Twenty-five, uncle," Pol told him, "the same age as I am."
"She looks older."
"She's been sick. I don't think the climate on that island agrees with her. She catches cold every winter, and it's getting harder and harder for her to shake them off." She looked at me.
"You didn't help her by sneaking off with her son the way you did."
"We didn't sneak," I objected.
"I left her a note."
"Belgarath's very good at leaving notes when he sneaks off," Beldin told her.
I shrugged.
"It avoids arguments. Daran and I needed to talk. He's reached the age where he has questions, and I'm the best one to answer them. I think we got it all settled--at least for now. He's a good boy, and now that he knows what's expected of him, he'll probably do all right."
It was late summer by the time we got back to the Vale, and I immediately went to work on the Darine Codex, since it was complete. I'd decided to hold off on the Mrin Codex, which was clearly the more difficult of the two. Difficulty is a relative term when you're talking about those two documents, however. The need to conceal the meaning of the prophecy made both of them very obscure.
After several years of intensive study, I began to develop a vague perception of what lay in store for us. I didn't like it very much, but at least I had a fuzzy sort of idea about what was coming. The Darine Codex is more general than the Mrin, but it does identify a number of cautionary signals. Each time one of those meetings is about to take place, it'll be preceded by a very specific event. At least that would give us a bit of warning.
It must have been ten years or so later when Dras Bull-neck sent a messenger to the Vale to advise us that the Mrin Prophet had died and to
deliver copies of the entire Mrin Codex. I laid aside Bormik's prophecy and dug into the ravings of that madman who'd spent most of his life chained to a post. As I just mentioned, the Darine Codex had given me a generalized idea of what was coming, and that made the Mrin Codex at least marginally comprehensible. It was still very rough going, though.
Polgara continued her own studies, and Beldin went back to Mallorea, so I was able to concentrate. As usually happens when I'm deeply into something, I lost track of time, so I can't really tell you exactly when it was that the Master came to me again, only that he had some very specific instructions. I regretfully set my studies aside and left for southern Tolnedra the very next morning.
I stopped by Prolgu to speak with the Gorim, and then I went to Tol Borune to have a few words with the grand duke. He wasn't very happy when I told him of the plans I had for his son, but when I advised him that what I was proposing would prepare the way for his family to ascend the Imperial Throne in Tol Honeth, he agreed to think about it. I didn't think it was really necessary to tell him that the elevation of the Borunes wasn't going to take place for about five hundred years. There's no real point in confusing people with picky little details, is there?
Then I ventured down to the Wood of the Dryads.
It was that time of year again, and it wasn't very long before I was accosted on a forest path by a golden-haired Dryad named Xalla. As usual, she had an arrow pointed directly at my heart.
"Oh, put that down," I told her irritably.
"You won't try to run away, will you?" she demanded.
"Of course not. I need to talk with Princess Xoria."
"I saw you first. Xoria can have you after I've finished with you."
As I mentioned before, I'd swung by Prolgu on my way to Tolnedra.
My long talk with the Gorim had been about the Dryads, so I was prepared.
I reached into my pocket and took out a piece of chocolate candy.
"Here," I said, holding it out to her.
"What's that?" "It's something to eat. Try it. You'll like it."
She took the candy and sniffed at it suspiciously. Then she popped it into her mouth.
You wouldn't believe how she reacted. There's something about chocolate that does strange things to Dryads. I've seen many women in the throes of passion, but Xalla carried it to such extremes that it actually embarrassed me. Finally I turned my back and went off a little distance so that she could have some privacy.
Rivan Codex Series Page 42