Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

  I stopped by Tol Honeth before I went north to visit Drasnia and Cherek. I always like to keep an eye on the Borunes. The man on the throne at that time was Ran Borune XXI, who, as it turned out, was Ce'Nedra's great-grandfather. I've mentioned the tendency of Tolnedrans to marry their cousins several times in the past, I think, and Ran Borune XXI was no exception. The Dryad strain in the Borune family always breeds true in female children, and the men of the family are absolutely captivated by Dryads. I think it's in their blood.

  Anyway, Ce'Nedra's great-grandfather was forty or so when I stopped by the palace, and his wife, Ce'Lanne, had flaming red hair and a disposition to match. She made the emperor's life very exciting, I understand.

  Tolnedrans were still keeping alive the fiction that my name was some obscure Alorn title, and the scholars of history at the university had concocted a wild theory about a

  "Brotherhood of Sorcerers" out of whole cloth. Some chance remark by Beldin or one of the twins probably had given rise to that, and the creative historians expanded on it. We were supposed to be some sort of religious order, I guess. One imaginative pedant even went so far as to suggest that the enmity between my brothers and me and Torak's disciples was the result of a schism within the order at some time in the distant past.

  I never bothered to correct all those wild misconceptions because they helped me to gain access to whichever Borune or Honethite or Vorduvian currently held the throne, and that saved a lot of time.

  It was winter when I reached Tol Honeth and presented myself at the palace. Winters are not particularly severe in Tol Honeth, so at least I hadn't been obliged to plow through snowdrifts on my way to the imperial presence.

  "And so you're Ancient Belgarath," Ran Borune said when I was presented to him.

  "That's what they tell me, your Majesty," I replied.

  "I've always wondered about that title," he said. Like all the Borunes, he was a small man, and his massive throne made him look just a bit ridiculous.

  "Tell me. Ancient One, is the title

  "Belgarath" hereditary, or were you and your predecessors chosen by lot or the auguries?"

  "Hereditary, your Majesty," I replied. Well, it was sort of true, I guess, depending on how you define the word "hereditary."

  "How disappointing," he murmured.

  "It'd be much more interesting if all those Belgaraths had been identified by some sign from on high. I gather that you've come to bring me some important news?"

  "No, your Majesty, not really. I happened to be in the vicinity, and I thought I might as well stop by and introduce myself."

  "How very courteous of you. One of my ancestors knew one of yours, I'm told--back during the war with the Angaraks."

  "So I understand, yes."

  He leaned back on that red-draped throne.

  "Those must have been the days," he said.

  "Peace is all right, I guess, but wars are much more exciting."

  "They're greatly overrated," I told him.

  "When you're at war, you spend most of your time either walking or sitting around waiting for something to happen. Believe me. Ran Borune, there are better ways to spend your time."

  Then his wife burst into the throne room.

  "What is this idiocy?" she demanded in a voice they could probably have heard in Tol Vordue.

  "Which particular idiocy was that, dear heart?" he asked quite calmly.

  "You're surely not going to send my daughter to the Isle of the Winds in the dead of winter!"

  "It's not my fault that her birthday comes in the wintertime, Ce'Lanne."

  "It's as much your fault as it is mine!"

  He coughed, looking slightly embarrassed.

  "The Rivans can wait until summer!" she stormed on.

  "The treaty states that she has to be there on her sixteenth birthday, love, and Tolnedrans don't violate treaties."

  "Nonsense! You cut corners on treaties all the time!"

  "Not this one. The world's peaceful right now, and I'd like to keep it that way. Tell Ce'Bronne to start packing. Oh, by the way, this is Ancient Belgarath."

  She flicked only one brief glance at me.

  "Charmed," she said shortly.

  Then she continued her tirade, citing all sorts of reasons why it was totally impossible for her daughter, Princess Ce'Bronne, to make the trip to Riva.

  I decided to step in at that point. I knew that Princess Ce'Bronne wasn't the one we were waiting for, but I didn't want the Borunes getting into the habit of ignoring one of the key provisions of the Accords of Vo Mimbre.

  "I'm going to Riva myself, your Imperial Highness," I told Ran Borune's flaming little wife.

  "I'll escort your daughter personally, if you'd like. I can guarantee her safety and make sure that she's treated with respect."

  "How very generous of you, Belgarath," Ran Borune stepped in quickly.

  "There you have it, Ce'Lanne. Our daughter will be in good hands. The Alorns have enormous respect for Ancient Belgarath here. I'll make all the arrangements personally." He was very smooth, I'll give him that. He'd lived with his empress long enough to know how to get around her.

  And so I escorted her Imperial little Highness, Princess Ce'Bronne, to the Isle of the Winds for her ritual presentation in the Hall of the Rivan King as the Accords of Vo Mimbre required. Ce'Bronne was as fiery as her mother and as devious as her grand niece What she couldn't get by screaming, she usually got by wheedling. I rather liked her. She sulked for the first few days on board the ship that carried us north, and I finally got tired of it.

  "What is your problem, young lady?" I demanded at breakfast on our fourth day out from Tol Honeth.

  "I don't want to marry an Alorn!"

  "Don't worry about it," I told her.

  "You won't have to."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "The Rivan King hasn't arrived yet. He won't be along for quite some time."

  "Any Alorn can show up at Riva and claim to be Iron-grip's descendant.

  I could be forced to marry a commoner."

  "No, dear," I told her.

  "In the first place, no Alorn would do that, and in the second, an imposter couldn't pass the test."

  "What test?"

  "The true Rivan King's the only one who can take Iron-grip's sword down off the wall in the throne room. An imposter couldn't get it off the stones with a sledgehammer. The Orb will see to that."

  "Have you ever seen this mysterious jewel?"

  "Many times, dear. Trust me. You're not going to be forced to marry an Alorn."

  "Because I'm not good enough?" she flared. She could change direction in the blink of an eye.

  "That has nothing to do with it, Ce'Bronne," I told her.

  "It's just not time yet. Too many other things have to happen first."

  Her eyes narrowed, and I'm sure she was trying to find some insult in what I'd just told her.

  "Well," she said finally in a somewhat ungracious manner, "all right--I guess. But I'm going to hold you to your word on this, Old Man."

  "I wouldn't have it any other way. Princess."

  And so I got the Imperial Princess Ce'Bronne to Riva on time, and the Alorn ladies in the Citadel pampered and flattered her into some semblance of gracious behavior. She made her obligatory appearance in the throne room and waited the required three days, and then I took her home again.

  "There now," I said to her as we disembarked on one of the marble wharves at Tol Honeth, "that wasn't so bad, was it?"

  "Well," she replied,

  "I guess not." Then she laughed a silvery laugh, threw her tiny arms around my neck, and kissed me soundly.

  I waited around Tol Honeth until spring arrived, and then I commandeered a Cherek war-boat to take me north. I went to Trellheim to look in on Barak's grandfather, who was every bit as big and red-bearded as the "Dreadful Bear" turned out to be, and quite nearly as intelligent. Everything seemed in order at Trellheim, so I went on to the village where Polgara was watchin
g over the family of Garion's great-grandfather, another one of those Gerans. Pol likes to slip that name in about every other generation, I think it has something to do with her sense of continuity.

  This particular Geran had just married a blonde Cherek girl, and things seemed to be going along the way they were supposed to.

  After we'd done all the usual things people do at family reunions, I finally got the chance to talk privately with my daughter.

  "I think we're going to have some problems with the Dryad princess when the time comes," I warned her.

  "Oh? What sort of problems?"

  "They're not particularly docile. We've been marrying all these young men to Alorn girls, and Alorn women are fairly placid. The Dryads in the Borune family are anything but placid. They're willful, spoiled, and very devious." I told her about Princess Ce'Bronne and our trip to Riva.

  "I'll take care of it, father," she assured me.

  "I'm sure you will, Pol, but I thought I ought to warn you. I think you're going to find the Rivan Queen quite a handful. Don't ever make the mistake of believing anything she tells you."

  "I can handle her when the time comes, father. Where are you going from here?"

  "Drasnia. I want to look in on the family of the Guide."

  "Are we getting at all close to the time?"

  "The twins think we are. They're starting to see some of the signs and omens. They seem to think that what we've been waiting for is going to happen in the next century or so."

  "Then I'll be out of a job, won't I?"

  "Oh, I think we'll be able to find something for you to do, Pol."

  "Thanks awfully, Old Man. If we're getting that close, I'd better think about relocating to Sendaria, shouldn't I?" She looked directly at me.

  "I

  can read the Darine and the Mrin as well as you can, father." She told me.

  "I know where the Godslayer's supposed to be born."

  "I guess we'd better start thinking about it," I agreed.

  "After I'm finished in Drasnia, I'll go back to the Vale and talk with the twins. Maybe they've picked up something more definite. This wouldn't be a good time to start making mistakes."

  "When are you leaving for Drasnia?"

  "Tomorrow ought to be soon enough. Do you suppose you could make one of those cherry tarts for breakfast, Pol? I haven't had one of your cherry tarts for over a century now, and I've really missed them."

  She gave me a long, steady look.

  "Yours are the very best, Pol," I said without even smiling.

  "There's an idea for you. After we get the Godslayer on his throne, you could open a pastry shop."

  "Have you lost your mind?"

  "You said you were going to be looking for a job, Pol. I'm just making a few suggestions, is all."

  She even had the grace to laugh.

  The next morning I left for Drasnia. Silk's grandfather was in the import business, dealing mainly in spices, and working for Drasnian intelligence on the side. There's nothing very unusual about that, though. All Drasnian merchants work for Drasnian intelligence on the side. Once again, everything was on schedule, so I went on back to the Vale.

  I was a bit surprised to find that the twins weren't around when I got home. They'd left a rather cryptic note for me--something about an urgent summons from Polgara. I tried to reach out to them with my mind, but for some reason I couldn't get them to answer. I swore a little bit, and then I turned around to go back to Cherek. I was starting to get just a little tired of all this traveling.

  It was late in the summer when I reached Val Alorn again, and I went on out to the village where Pol lived with her little family. She wasn't there, however. The twins were minding things instead. They were just a bit evasive when I asked them where she was.

  "She asked us not to tell you, Belgarath," Beltira said with a slightly pained expression.

  "And I'm asking you to ignore her," I told him flatly.

  "All right, you two, give. I don't have time to tear the world apart looking for her.

  Where'd she go?"

  They looked at each other.

  "She's a long way ahead of him by now,"

  Belkira said to his brother.

  "I don't think he could catch her, so we might as well tell him."

  "You're probably right," Beltira agreed.

  "She's gone to Nyissa, Belgarath."

  "Nyissa? What for?"

  "Pol's got ways to get information--and instructions. You knew about that, of course, didn't you?"

  I'd known for quite a long time now that Pol received her own instructions.

  It simply never occurred to me that hers might come from a different source than mine. I nodded.

  "Anyway," Beltira went on,

  "Pol received a warning that Ctuchik's been following up on something Zedar did back at the beginning of the fifth millennium. He's been in contact with the current Salmissra, and he's just about persuaded her to join with him. Pol was instructed to go to Sthiss Tor to talk her out of it."

  "Why Pol?" I asked him.

  "I could have taken care of that."

  "Pol didn't go into too much detail," Belkira replied.

  "You know how she can be sometimes. Evidently it's something that requires a woman's touch."

  "We aren't the only ones who have prophecies, Belgarath," Beltira reminded me.

  "The Salmissras have their own ways to see into the future.

  They've all been far more afraid of Polgara than they have been of you.

  Pol's going to do something pretty awful to one of the Serpent queens, I guess, and she's gone to Sthiss Tor to ask the current Salmissra if she's volunteering to be the one it happens to. That all by itself should be enough to persuade Salmissra to break off her contacts with Ctuchik."

  "All right, but why all this subterfuge? Why didn't she just tell me about it? Why did she sneak around behind my back?"

  Belkira smiled.

  "She explained it to us," he said.

  "You don't really want us to repeat what she said, do you?"

  "I think I can probably live with it. Go ahead and tell me."

  He shrugged.

  "It's up to you. She said that you're tiresomely overprotective and that every time she sets out to do something, you argue with her about it for weeks on end. Then she said that she was going to do this whether you liked it or not, and that things would go more smoothly if you kept your nose out of it." He grinned at me.

  "I don't think that's particularly funny, Belkira."

  "It was when she said it. I've glossed over some of the words she used.

  Pol's got quite a vocabulary, hasn't she?"

  I have him a long, steady look.

  "Why don't we just drop it?" I suggested.

  "Anything you say, brother."

  "The next time she talks with you, ask her to stop by the Vale on her way home. Tell her that I'm looking forward to a little chat."

  Then I turned around and went on back to the Vale.

  About a month later, Pol obediently came to my tower. I'd calmed down by then, so I didn't berate her--at least not too much.

  "You seem to be taking this very well, Old Man," she noted.

  "There's not much point in screaming about something after it's over. Exactly what was Ctuchik up to?"

  "The usual," she replied.

  "He's trying to subvert enough people in the West to help him when the time comes. The Murgos have reopened the South Caravan Route, and they're flooding into the West again. I think we'd all better start concentrating on the Mrin Codex. Ctuchik seems to believe that things are coming to a head. He's doing everything he can to drive the Western Kingdoms apart. He definitely doesn't want us to be unified next time the way we were at Vo Mimbre. Angarak alliances are tenuous at best, and it seems that Ctuchik wants to sow dissention in the West to offset that."

  "You're getting very good at this, Pol."

  "I've had a good teacher."

  "Thank you," I said, a
nd for a minute there, I felt unaccountably grateful to that unpredictable daughter of mine.

  "Don't mention it." She grinned at me.

  "Why don't you get back to Cherek and send the twins home? If anybody's going to get anything definite out of the Mrin, they'll be the ones who'll do it."

  "Whatever you say, father."

  It took the twins until the turn of the century to start getting what we needed out of the Mrin Codex. In the spring of the year 5300 they came to my tower bubbling over with excitement.

  "It's just about to happen, Belgarath!" Beltira exclaimed.

  "The Godslayer will arrive during this century!"

  "It's about time," I said.

  "What took you two so long to dig it out?"

  "We weren't supposed to find it until now," Belkira replied.

  "Would you like to clarify that?"

  "The Necessity's got a much tighter control than we've ever realized,"

  he said.

  "The passage that told us that this is the century when it's all going to happen is right out there in plain sight. We've all read it dozens of times, but it didn't make any sense until now. Last night, though, the meaning of it just fell into place in our minds. We've talked it over, and we're both sure that no matter how much we struggle with the Mrin, we're not going to understand what any given passage means until the Necessity's ready for us to understand it. In a peculiar sort of way, the understanding itself is a part of the EVENT."

  "That's a mighty cumbersome way to do business," I objected.

  "Why would the Necessity play those kind of games with all of us?"

  "We talked about that, too, Belgarath," Beltira told me.

  "It almost seems designed to keep you from tampering. We think that the Necessity's rather fond of you, but it knows you too well to give you enough time to step in and try to change things."

  "You do try to do that a lot, you know," Belkira said, grinning at me.