Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

  "What's going on here, Rennig?" I demanded.

  "Where's the Orb?" "It's over here, Ancient One," he told me. He pointed at a large round shield leaning against the wall about ten feet off to the right of the throne. It was a fairly standard Alorn shield, big, round, and heavy, with those thick steel straps Alorns always rivet to their shields. What was definitely not standard was the fact that my Master's Orb was embedded in the exact center of it.

  "Who did this?" My voice was shaking.

  "We don't know. The guards who were here that night had never seen her before."

  "Her? A woman did this?"

  He nodded.

  "I'd have had some doubts about it myself, Belgarath, but I've known both of those men since childhood. They're honest men, and they'd never lie about something like this."

  "No one can touch the Orb except--" I broke off as that passage in the Mrin started echoing in my head.

  "And the Child of Light shall take the jewel from its accustomed place--" I'd thought that it meant that this interim Child would take down the Sword and deliver it to Brand. I'd even believed that the passage was a set of instructions to me--that I was the one who was supposed to take it down off the wall and carry it back to Tol Honeth. But the passage wasn't talking about the sword. This woman, whoever she was, had removed it and set it in the center of the shield instead. Pol had been right. Since no one could touch the Orb except the Child of Light, that particular position was being passed around--but a woman?

  Then the two off-duty guardsmen came into the hall and walked rather hesitantly toward us. I suppose that someday I'm going to have to do something about my reputation for being bad-tempered.

  "Oh, come here," I told them shortly.

  "I'm not going to bite you. You couldn't have done anything to stop her. When did this happen?"

  "About a week ago, Ancient One," the taller of the two replied.

  How convenient--and how predictable. The incident had occurred at almost exactly the same time as when I'd decided to come to Riva.

  "It was sorcery, Holy One," the other guard asserted.

  "We were standing guard outside the door late at night, and a woman came down the corridor."

  "We knew that something strange was happening," the tall guard added, "particularly since she was on fire."

  "On fire?"

  "Well, glowing, actually. There was bright blue light coming from her."

  That got my attention.

  "She was a pretty woman," the other guard put in.

  "At least she would have been if she hadn't been all blue. She opened the door to the hall and went inside. We followed her down to the throne. When she got there, she raised her hand and said,

  "Come to me." It was almost as if she was calling a pet dog."

  "This was all pretty strange," the other man said, "but we've talked it over, and we both saw what happened next. The pommel stone on that big sword just came loose and floated down to her hand--and it was glowing, too. Then she walked over to that shield--and I've never seen that shield in here before--and she set the stone against the middle of it, and it sort of melted its way right into the steel."

  "Did she leave then?" I asked them.

  "She said something first."

  "Oh? Did she say who she was?"

  "She only said,

  "One will come, and he will know what to do." Then she sort of smiled and went back to the door. We followed her, but when we got out into the corridor, she was gone. That's all we saw, Ancient One. There wasn't a thing we could do to stop her."

  "You've got that part right," I told him.

  "Nobody could have stopped her--whoever she was."

  I picked up the heavy shield with both hands.

  "This "ghost," or whatever, was right about one thing. I do know what to do with this."

  "That's the Orb, Holy Belgarath," Rennig objected.

  "It's supposed to stay here on the Isle."

  "Yes, it is," I replied, "right up until the time we need it. And unless my calculations are off, your father's going to need it fairly soon."

  On my trip back to Tol Honeth, I brooded about the fact that the Orb was now part of a shield rather than a sword. That obviously meant that Brand wasn't going to kill Torak. A shield by its very nature is defensive, and that began to change my thinking about the strategy the Tolnedran generals had put together for the battle that was going to be fought at Vo Mimbre. Maybe we could win from a defensive position.

  Just about the only really significant thing I did during the return voyage was to notify the twins about the alteration in the Orb's location. I was definitely going to need some instruction here.

  The Angarak siege of the Algarian Stronghold dragged on for another year. Then in the late spring of 4874, Beldin came back from southern Cthol Murgos to advise us that Urvon had assembled his army on the plains of Hagga and begun his march to the west. If General Cerran's calculations were correct, we had about one more year before the final battle. We'd know for certain when Torak broke off his siege of the Stronghold and also started west.

  I spent much of the following summer scurrying around to make certain that everything was in place. Inevitably, hostilities broke out periodically between the warring factions in Arendia, and Polgara and I had to rush north from Tol Honeth to quiet things down again.

  Although the twins labored mightily, we weren't able to get very many clues from the Mrin. That concerned me a great deal until I finally realized that the whole business of the fight between Brand and Torak was completely out of my hands. That particular revelation came to me in the early autumn when we all saw a marked change in Brand's behavior.

  "A word with you, Belgarath?" he said to me one rainy afternoon as our meeting with the Tolnedran generals was breaking up.

  "Of course," I replied.

  "Let's go outside," he suggested.

  "I think this needs to be sort of private, and I'd rather not have some Tolnedran spy carrying word of what we say to Ran Borune. He's a good man, I suppose, but he gets nervous when things he doesn't understand start cropping up."

  I smiled faintly.

  "Nervous" was a gross understatement. Brand and I went out of the army headquarters building and strolled across the sodden lawns of the imperial compound.

  "You've been the instrument of Necessity in the past, haven't you?" he asked me once we were certain that no one was near us.

  "I'm not sure I follow you, my friend," I replied.

  "I've spent my whole life running errands for it."

  "I'm talking about something a little more specific. As I understand it, you and the Necessity were fairly close when you and Bear-shoulders and the others went to Cthol Mishrak."

  "Yes. So what?"

  "Did it talk to you?"

  "Oh, yes, that it did."

  "I'm glad to hear that. I thought that my reason might be slipping. It has a peculiar way of talking, doesn't it?"

  "It's got a warped sense of humor. What's it been saying?"

  "Nothing all that specific. I've been a little edgy about what I'm supposed to do when we all get together at Vo Mimbre, and it's been telling me not to worry so much." He stopped and looked directly at me.

  "Did you know what you were going to do before you did it? I mean, when something came up, did the knowledge of how to respond just pop into your head?"

  I nodded.

  "That's part of the way it works," I replied.

  "The friend you've got inside your head usually doesn't bother to explain things, he just builds the correct responses into your mind. You don't even have to think about it. What's he got you doing right now?"

  "I'm supposed to persuade the Tolnedrans that the threat of Urvon's army isn't all that great. I'm going to need the legions at Vo Mimbre."

  "That might take a bit of doing. General Cerran's completely committed to the idea that he's going to have to defend his southern border."

  "He'll find out that it won't be necessary. Urv
on and Ctuchik are going to make a mistake. They won't even reach Nyissa."

  "What kind of mistake?"

  "I have no idea. The problem's going to be that Cerran won't find out about it until Torak's almost right on top of Vo Mimbre. He won't have time to march his legions from southern Tolnedra to the battlefield."

  "We aren't going to march them," I told him.

  "How are they going to get there, then?"

  "The Chereks are going to sail them there."

  "How do you know that?"

  I made a face.

  "Our mutual friend stuck the idea in my brain several thousand years ago."

  "You mean you've known all along?"

  "Not consciously. You'll get used to that, Brand. The instructions don't surface until you need them. I think that's part of the agreement between our Necessity and Torak's. As soon as you told me about this "mistake" that Urvon and Ctuchik are going to make, I knew exactly how we were going to get the legions to Vo Mimbre."

  He smiled a wry sort of smile.

  "I guess it makes sense--in a peculiar sort of way. Apparently our friend doesn't want our minds cluttered up with these things until we absolutely need to know them. I just hope he isn't late with the information when Torak and I get started."

  "Amen to that. Have you got any clues about why the Orb's set in that shield now instead of on the hilt of the sword?"

  "All I know is that I'm not supposed to hit Torak with it--or with anything connected to it. Somebody else is going to do that. All I'm supposed to do is show it to Torak."

  "Show it to him? He's seen it before. Brand."

  "All right, Belgarath, keep your nose out of it." I recognized the voice, of course.

  "You do your work and let Brand do his."

  The startled look on Brand's face clearly showed that he'd also heard what our friend had just said.

  "Does he always talk to you that way?" he asked.

  I nodded glumly.

  "All the time. There must be something about me that sets his teeth on edge. I think we'd better get General Cerran off to one side and start him to thinking about contingency planning."

  "Why not just tell him who you really are? And where we're getting our instructions from?"

  "No, Brand, not yet. I want him to have his legions at Vo Mimbre before I spring any surprises on him. Cerran's a good, solid man, but he's still Tolnedran. We'll tell him that there'll be a Cherek fleet at the mouth of the River of the Woods, 'just in case he needs it." He'll know what to do when the time comes."

  It was spring of 4875 when Torak finally threw up his hands in disgust, broke off his siege of the Stronghold, and started marching west with what was left of his army. The Algars and the vengeful Drasnians harried his rear as he moved westward. There are always stragglers trailing along behind any army on the march, but in this situation, those stragglers never caught up with their main force.

  When Kal Torak reached Ulgoland, things went even further downhill for him. Every night the Ulgos came out of their caves like hunting cats to cut up the sentries posted around the fringes of the Angarak army.

  On a number of occasions they even managed to get into the midst of the encampment to kill large numbers of Torak's soldiers. Torak tended to ignore those inconveniences but his troops grew very nervous, and most of them gave up on sleeping altogether.

  The maimed God of Angarak grimly pressed on, taking dreadful casualties as he went, and eventually he reached the headwaters of the River Arend.

  The Alorn kings and I'd deployed our forces around Vo Mimbre as soon as the twins advised me that Torak was on the move, and all was in readiness--except that we didn't have any Tolnedran Legions.

  Torak paused to regroup, but we still had no word of what was happening in southern Cthol Murgos. If something didn't happen down there, and very soon, we were going to have to fight without the aid of the legions. This wasn't turning out very well.

  Then, late one night when I'd just fallen into a fitful sleep, Beldin's voice woke me up again.

  "Belgarath!" he chortled.

  "You can stop worrying about Urvon! He isn't going to make it!"

  "What happened?"

  "The Murgos were cutting his army to pieces, and he wanted some open ground to fight them off. He went out into the Great Desert of Araga, and the Murgos followed him."

  "They exterminated each other?" I asked gleefully.

  "We, something else did. Is it still raining there?"

  "Beldin, it's been raining almost steadily since 4850. It's never going to let up."

  "It probably will now. The reason for it just went through the Desert of Araga. There's been a blizzard raging in that wasteland for the last five days. There are fifteen-foot snowdrifts piled all over the top of Urvon and the Murgos who were chasing him. Nobody down here is going to go anyplace. Torak's going to have to fight you with just the men he's got."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I went down the hallway, woke Pol, and passed Beldin's news on to her.

  "Fortuitous," she noted, brewing herself a cup of tea. I've never cared that much for tea myself, but Pol had picked up a taste for the stuff during her years in Vo Wacune.

  "I think it goes a little further than that, Pol," I disagreed.

  "The foul weather we've endured for the past quarter century was all in preparation for that blizzard, so we can hardly call it a stroke of luck. Even then, Urvon wouldn't have gone out into that waste and got himself trapped if Ctuchik hadn't been playing games."

  "How big is that desert?"

  "The Great Desert of Araga? It's about the size of Algaria. There's no way Urvon can dig himself out of those snowdrifts in time to make any difference at Vo Mimbre."

  "Unless Torak decides to stop and wait for him."

  "He can't. The EVENT has to take place at a specific time."

  "I think we've still got a problem, though."

  "Oh? Things seem to be going along rather well from where I sit."

  "Don't smirk like that, father. We know that Urvon's bogged down, but how are we going to convince Ran Borune and General Cerran that he's no longer a danger to their southern border? We're used to these manipulations of the natural order of things, but they aren't. This blizzard doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't free up the legions."

  Trust Polgara to take the shine off things. I scowled at the floor for a few moments.

  "We'd better talk with Rhodar," I decided.

  "A dispatch from one of his spies might turn the trick."

  "That ploy's wearing a bit thin, father. Ran Borune and Cerran both know that we want the legions at Vo Mimbre. A dispatch that just "happens" to arrive in the nick of time's going to make them very suspicious.

  Why not just tell them the truth? Show them your copy of the Mrin and point out the number of times it's been right in the past."

  "I don't think it'll work, Pol. We might persuade Ran Borune. He's seen enough in the past few years to realize that there's more going on here than he can explain rationally. But we've made such a point of giving the generals reasonable explanations for things that a sudden jump into reality's going to jerk Cerran up short. It'd take months to persuade him, and we don't have months. Torak's marching down the River Arend toward Vo Mimbre right now, and it's going to take the Chereks a while to ferry the legions north to Arendia. Cerran's learned that Rhodar's information's usually correct. Let's try it that way before we jump off into something exotic. I want those legions at Vo Mimbre, and I don't have time to educate the Tolnedran General Staff."

  "This isn't going to be settled by armies, father. Brand and Torak are going to fight a duel, and that's the EVENT we're waiting for. All this maneuvering around isn't anything but preparation."

  "Necessary preparation, Pol. Torak outnumbers us if we don't have the legions. He won't have any reason to accept Brand's challenge unless the issue's in doubt. We're going to have to bloody his nose a bit before he'll even consider coming out of that iron pavilion of his to engag
e in single combat with the Child of Light. Torak might be crazy, but he's not foolish enough to risk something like that unless we force him into it."

  "We still have to get past General Cerran."

  "I know. Let's get Rhodar and go to the palace. We might as well get started with this."

  As I'd more or less expected, Ran Borune was inclined to accept Rhodar's story about a dispatch from the South. The Tolnedran Emperor was shrewd enough to realize that Pol and I had ways to get information that he couldn't fully understand, and as long as we gave him a graceful way to take what we told him on faith, he was willing to go along with us.

  General Cerran, however, dug in his heels.

  "I'm sorry, your Majesty," he apologized to his emperor, "but I simply can't advise leaving our southern border undefended without some verification of this report. I'm not trying to be offensive, King Rhodar, but I'm sure you can see my position.

  All I've got to go on here is an encrypted message that I can't even read, from a man I don't even know. His dispatch might be exaggerated, or it might be that he was captured and forced to send the message. Nothing would suit Urvon better than tricking us into pulling the legions out of the south. If the report's inaccurate, Urvon could be camped in the streets of Tol Borune before we could get back into position."

  "How long would it take you to get some verification, Cerran?" Ran Borune asked him.

  "A couple of weeks at least, your Majesty," the general replied.

  "I've got three legions on the north bank of the River Borgasa in southern Nyissa. They're functioning primarily as scouts to give us a warning when Urvon approaches the Nyissan border. If I can get orders to them to go have a look, a mounted patrol could cut across the southwestern tip of Goska to the desert and be back again in a week or ten days." He spread his hands helplessly.