Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

  "I think so. The Mrin says that Torak's going to be engaged before the golden city for three days. It doesn't say anything about him getting inside."

  "That could be open to interpretation, Belgarath," Cho-Ram objected.

  "Just about everything in the Mrin's open to interpretation, Cho-Ram, but I think it'd mention it if Vo Mimbre were going to fall. That'd probably be an EVENT, and the Mrin doesn't miss very many of those.

  Get your people together, gentlemen. Move out at first light, but stay at least five miles back from Torak's left. The Mimbrates are going to have to hold out alone for one more day."

  I went northwesterly from their encampment, and it was very close to morning when I found the Rivans, Sendars, and Asturian archers.

  "It's time to move, gentlemen," I told Brand, Ormik, and Eldallan.

  "I want you to be within striking distance of Kal Torak's rear by this evening.

  Don't engage him, though. I'll need every man I can get when tomorrow rolls around."

  Brand was holding the shield with my Master's Orb embedded in the center of it, and, probably without even being aware that he was doing it, he was idly stroking the glowing jewel almost as if it were a puppy.

  "Don't play with it, Brand," I cautioned him.

  "It'll do some strange things to your mind if you keep your hand on it for too long. Has your friend told you what you're supposed to do yet?"

  He shook his head.

  "Not yet. I imagine he'll get around to it when the time comes."

  "You seem to be taking this all very calmly," Ormik accused him.

  "It won't do me any good to get excited." Brand looked at me.

  "You've been the Child of Light once or twice, haven't you, Belgarath?"

  he asked.

  "Once," I said.

  "At least once that I know about. Your friend might have slipped a couple of others in on me without bothering to tell me about it. Why do you ask?"

  "Did you feel--well--sort of distant from what was going on? I've been feeling just a bit abstracted for the past few days. It's almost as if I weren't going to be personally involved when I meet Torak."

  "That's the Necessity working. And you're at least partly right: when you get right down to it, your friend'll sort of take over."

  "And Torak's friend will take him over, as well?"

  "I'm not too sure about that, Brand. The two Necessities are different, and they might do things differently. Ours just steps in and takes charge. Torak's might not do it that way. Torak's not the sort to take something like that philosophically anyway. Maybe we'll find out when the EVENT rolls around. Start your men south, gentlemen. I'd better get back to Vo Mimbre and see what Zedar's up to."

  Zedar evidently had been up to no good. There were a dozen or so mangonels em placed just beyond the range of Asturian arrows as I flew back to the city, and they were already hurling huge rocks at the walls. A mangonel's an oversized catapult, about the size of a small house, and it can throw thousand-pound rocks for a long distance. There hadn't been any of them among the other engines the previous day, and their sudden appearance this morning was a fair indication that Zedar'd had a busy night. He hadn't thrown the Will and the Word directly at the city or its defenders, so I couldn't be certain whether he was breaking the rules yet.

  He was pushing at the edges of them, though, and that gave me an idea. If he could do it without getting himself exploded, then so could I. I settled onto the battlements, resumed my own form, and went looking for the twins.

  "When did the mangonels start?" I asked them.

  "Just before dawn," Beltira replied.

  "They're doing a lot of damage to the walls, Belgarath. There are several places where the foundations are starting to crack. We'd better do something--and soon."

  "I was just getting to that. Did you hear Zedar working during the night?"

  "Quite clearly," Belkira replied.

  "He was in a hurry, so he didn't even try to hide the fact that he was using his Will. What are we going to do?"

  "The same thing he did. He got away with it, so we can--I think.

  Let's go build some mangonels of our own."

  "They take a long time to aim, Belgarath," Beltira objected.

  "And thousand-pound rocks would be very hard to move, even for us."

  "A thousand one-pound rocks should be manageable, though," I said.

  "We'll be shooting at the engine crews, not at a solid wall. We won't have to be too accurate if all we're trying to do is fill the sky with smaller rocks to rain down on the Thulls manning Zedar's mangonels. Then, once we've got the range, we can start dropping burning pitch on them. I think they'll lose interest at that point. Let's go get started."

  I had some of the same reservations about the idea as Belsambar'd had during the War of the Gods. I didn't like the idea of burning people alive, but I had to neutralize those engines. If the walls of Vo Mimbre fell, Torak'd be in the city by nightfall, and he'd win. I wasn't going to let that happen if I could possibly stop it.

  It didn't take the twins and me very long to manufacture our mangonels.

  Zedar's engines were sitting out in plain sight, so we plagiarized.

  Aiming them wasn't a particular problem either. Among his other talents, Belmakor had been a mathematician, and he'd given the twins several centuries of instruction. It took them only about fifteen minutes to compute angles, trajectories, proper tension, and weights. Our first throw dropped half a ton of fist-size rocks directly on top of one of Zedar's engines. The second one engulfed that monstrosity in fire.

  Did you know that people almost always run when they're on fire? It doesn't do any good, of course, but they do it anyway. Burning Thulls fell back into the ranks of Torak's other troops, causing a great deal of confusion, and after an hour or so, we'd eliminated the problem. Zedar'd lost a whole night's sleep for nothing.

  At that point, he didn't really have any choice but to mount another frontal assault. I knew that something was coming, because I could feel his Will building even as his troops were forming up for the charge. When he released it, a howling wind-storm struck the walls of Vo Mimbre.

  No, he wasn't trying to blow us off the top of the walls. He was trying to deflect the arrows of our archers. I shudder to think of the effort his windstorm caused him. Moving that much air's a great deal like trying to pick up a mountain.

  The twins took steps without even bothering to consult with me. Working in tandem, they erected a barrier of pure Will about a mile out from the walls, neatly dividing Zedar's wind-storm and sending it streaming off to either side of the city. The air around Vo Mimbre became dead calm, and the Asturian archers cut down whole battalions of charging Malloreans.

  The attack faltered, stopped, and then reversed.

  Polgara came up and joined us on the walls late in the morning.

  "You three have been busy, haven't you?" she observed.

  "You're making so much noise that I can't even hear myself think. Zedar's right on the verge of exhaustion, you know."

  "Good," I said.

  "I'm getting tired of playing games with him."

  "Don't start gloating yet, father. Zedar's not the only one out there, you know. I'm getting the sense of a lot of other minds at work. Zedar's called in the Grolims to help him."

  "Can you get any idea of what he'll try next, dear sister?" Belkira asked her.

  "Nothing specific," she replied.

  "They seem to be thinking about dirt."

  "Dirt?" Belkira exclaimed.

  "What's dirt got to do with anything? All that's out there right now is mud."

  "They're drying it out. Zedar's got his Grolims concentrating on extracting the last trace of moisture out of that plain."

  "What on earth for?"

  "I'm not privy to that information, uncle," she told him.

  "Zedar doesn't confide in me, for some reason."

  "Zedar's always been a tacky sort of person," Belkira said.

 
; "I don't want to hurt your feelings, Belgarath, but I've never really liked him all that much. Are you sure you didn't leave a few things out when you were educating him?"

  Beltira would never have said that. My brothers weren't exactly identical, I discovered. It's very easy to miss these subtle little variations.

  Identical twins look alike, but no two people are ever really the same.

  Pol's left eyebrow was already up before she even looked at me.

  "Yes?" she said.

  "Was there something?"

  "Never mind," I said. I've never been entirely sure just how deeply Polgara can reach into my thoughts, and I think I'd like to keep it that way. Durnik doesn't have any secrets from Pol, but I've got secrets that I don't even want to look at myself. If you're going to maintain any kind of self-respect, you're going to have to keep secrets from yourself.

  It was late afternoon before we discovered why Zedar had been spending so much time and effort drying out dirt. The wind-storm he'd kicked up earlier in the day to deflect the Asturian arrows was still blowing harmlessly off to either side of the city, but it changed direction and came swirling across that now bone-dry plain picking up great clouds of dust. After a few minutes, it was impossible to see anything out there. The dust storm obviously was meant to conceal another assault. Wildantor's archers would have to shoot blind, and that's not particularly effective.

  "We'd better do something, Belgarath!" Beltira shouted over the scream of the wind.

  "I'm working on it," I told him, but try as I might, I couldn't come up with a thing.

  Polgara was already ahead of me, though.

  "We've got a river right here, father," she said, "and Zedar's half killed himself raising this windstorm for us. What does that suggest to you?"

  "Nothing in particular. What does it suggest to you?"

  "Oh, father, have your brains gone to sleep?"

  "Don't be coy, Pol. Out with it."

  "We need to lay all that dust, don't we? I think a waterspout would probably take care of it, don't you?"

  "Pol, that's brilliant! Get the twins to help you. They stirred up all kinds of bad weather during the War of the Gods."

  "We could probably use a little help from you, father."

  "You'll get it, Pol."

  "Oh?"

  "I think brother Zedar needs a quick lesson in good manners."

  "You're going to reach out and stop his heart?"

  "No. I've been told not to do anything permanent to him. But I can distract him, and don't think making him extremely uncomfortable will violate any rules."

  "Have fun," she told me, and then she and the twins went on around the top of the wall to the side that faced the river.

  I considered a number of options and finally settled on one that not only would make him extremely uncomfortable, but would also humiliate him. I went looking for him with my mind, and I eventually found him on top of a hill about five miles away. Trust Zedar to stay as far away from the fighting as he possibly could. I gathered in my Will and then released it very slowly. I didn't want him to know what I was doing until it was too late.

  He was looking out over his dust storm with a sense of smug satisfaction.

  He absently scratched his nose.

  Then he vigorously dug his fingernails into one armpit. After that he moved his attention to other parts of his body. His scratching grew more and more feverish even as Polgara and the twins broke off a piece of his windstorm and sent it whirling down the River Arend.

  In a burst of sheer, fiendish creativity, I even made his toenails itch.

  After a few minutes, he was actually dancing, and he was digging at his skin so hard that he was bleeding from a dozen different places.

  When the wind Pol and the twins had borrowed came swirling back up the River Arend, it was carrying tons of water with it, and that was more than enough to settle the dust Zedar'd spent hours carefully drying out.

  The attack force that had been creeping through the dust storm was largely comprised of Murgos, and once Wildantor's archers could see them, King Ad Rak Cthoros led a much smaller army back out of the range of those far-reaching arrows.

  Pol's brief rainstorm had passed, but the setting sun sparkled on the wet grass, and Torak was still outside the walls.

  We had survived another day, and if all went well tomorrow we'd see the end of all this.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I'M sure you noticed that Zedar's ploys on that second day really weren't very effective. I'd always thought he was strong on planning, but Zedar tended to get rattled in emergencies, and he'd frequently try the first thing that popped into his head without thinking his way completely through it. Add the fact that Torak left everything up to him, but expected results, and you can see his problem. Zedar didn't work well under pressure.

  Anyway, we'd survived the first two days of the battle. Vo Mimbre had withstood everything the Angaraks had thrown at it, and if we were reading the Mrin Codex right, things should start turning in our favor now.

  There was an Arendish poet known as Davoul the Lame at the Mimbrate court during Aldorigen's reign, and he'd been working on his prose epic,

  "The Latter Days of the House of Mimbre," for about ten years when Torak invaded Arendia. The invasion gave him something important to include in his epic, and he was forever limping around the outskirts of our discussions feverishly scribbling notes. I didn't care much for him. He was technically the official court poet, and that seems to have gone to his head. The epic he was producing was cast in "high style," and it was pompous, windy, and without too much in the way of literary merit.

  The Mimbrates adore that shop-worn convention, however, and even to this day they'll quote long passages of Davoul's epic every time they get a chance. I've got a copy of the silly thing, if you want to borrow it, but I wouldn't waste my time, if I were you.

  By the evening of the second day of the battle, I had everyone in position, and all we were doing was waiting for Beldin. Pol flew out to have a look just before dawn of the third day, and she reported back that Eldrig's war-boats were coming upriver. The River Arend was in flood stage because of all the rain, however, and the current was definitely slowing him down.

  Pol, the twins, and I had decided that there wasn't much point in remaining in the city now. The Mimbrates knew what they were supposed to do, and they didn't need guidance. Beltira went east to march with the Algars, Drasnians, and Ulgos while Belkira went up into the fairly extensive forest lying to the north to join Brand.

  Don't waste your time looking for those woods. They aren't there anymore.

  We chopped them down shortly after the battle was over. I disapprove of chopping down trees as a general rule, but we needed a lot of firewood in a hurry.

  We still weren't entirely certain just how stringent the prohibitions the Necessities had imposed on us really were, so we rather tentatively nibbled around the edges of them. We were fairly sure that we wouldn't be permitted to turn all the Angaraks into frogs, but there didn't seem to be anything preventing the one thing we really needed. As long as I could speak with the twins and Beldin, we'd be able to coordinate things, and we didn't need anything else. This third day was going to be settled on the ground, so we didn't need exotic displays of our talents to confuse matters.

  Pol and I flew north and perched in a tree at the edge of Brand's woods to keep an eye on the Angaraks while we all waited for it to get light. As dawn slowly crept up the eastern sky, we were able to make out more and more details of Zedar's deployment. He'd moved his people around during the night. Torak knew what was coming as well or better than we did, and Zedar'd made preparations for it.

  Ad Rak Cthoros, the bulky, grim-faced king of Cthol Murgos, was now on the left flank. A lot of the soldiers in the world wear chain mail the same as the Murgos do, so Ad Rak Cthoros had ordered his men to paint their mail shirts red for purposes of identification on the battlefield.

  It made them look as it they'd been dipped
in blood, but I guess it served its purpose.

  The Malloreans, who were by far the most numerous members of Kal Torak's army, were solidly planted in the center, and they were commanded by generals from Mal Zeth, although it was Zedar who was giving all the orders, and Zedar was getting his orders from Torak himself.

  Torak liked to think of himself as a military genius, but how much intelligence does it take to overwhelm your opponents with sheer numbers?

  Yar Lek Thun of Gar og Nadrak and Gethel Mardu of Thulldom held the right flank. I don't think I'd have done it that way. The legions and Eldrig's Chereks were going to be coming from that direction, and, although the Nadraks are fairly good warriors despite the fact that they're a bit high strung, Thulls aren't very dependable once the fighting starts.

  "Why don't you wake everybody up, father?" Pol suggested.

  "I guess we might as well," I agreed.

  "Belkira," I sent out my thought.

  "Let's get started. Tell Brand to blow his horn."

  He didn't bother to answer, but I'm sure he got my message, because a moment or so later, Brand's deep-toned horn sounded a long, haunting note. Then, a minute later, Cho-Ram's silver-voiced trumpet answered from the east, and then Mandor's horn sang out from inside the walls of Vo Mimbre. Pol and I listened carefully for several minutes, but Beldin didn't respond. He wasn't in place yet.

  A scholar at the University of Tol Honeth once wrote a long dissertation about the mythic significance of those horn blasts, but they weren't really anything but announcements that the various forces were in place and ready. Nothing was going to happen until Beldin answered. We certainly weren't going to start without him.

  I'm sure that Zedar knew what the horn blasts meant. We'd used those same signals during the War of the Gods. The sounds, coming just as it was starting to get light, made the leaders of the various Angarak forces nervous, though, and the Malloreans began to bang their swords against their shields and shout war cries. I guess that noisy racket was supposed to hearten everybody. It sounded just a little desperate to me, though. Horn blasts are a traditional signal to attack, but nobody was attacking. I can see where that might get on somebody's nerves, can't you?