Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

  "Well met, Ancient Belgarath!" Mandorallen greeted me in that booming voice of his.

  "I have been in search of thee!" Mandorallen was only about seventeen at that time, but there was already an impressive muscularity about him.

  "What is it this time, Mandorallen?" I demanded.

  "I have been, as thou doubtless know--for certes, all things are known to thee--at Vo Ebor, where my dear friend and guardian, the baron of that fair domain, hath been providing instruction unto me in the knightly arts, and--" "Mandorallen, get to the point!"

  He looked a little injured by that.

  "In short," he said--as if a Mimbrate could ever say anything in short, "thy brethren Beltira and Belkira came but recently to Vo Ebor and besought me that I should seek thee out. Straightaway I went to horse, and, thinking that thou wert still in Tol Honeth, I posted southward that I might bring thee news that thy gentle brethren felt might be of interest unto thee."

  "Oh? What news is this?"

  "I confess that I have no understanding of the true import of their message, but I am instructed to advise thee that a certain kinswoman of thine is with child, and that thy daughter, whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting--though I yearn for the day when I shall be privileged to greet her and respectfully bend my knee unto her--" "All right, Mandorallen, I get the message."

  "This news, I presume, is of some significance?"

  "Moderately so, Sir Knight."

  "Might I know its import?"

  "No, you might not. You don't need to know what it means. Turn around and go back to Vo Ebor. You have performed your duty, Sir Knight, and I thank you. Now go home."

  I'll take this opportunity to apologize for my abruptness to the Knight Protector. All I really wanted him to do was to get out of sight so that I could go into paroxysms of exultation. Ildera was pregnant! The Godslayer dozed beneath her heart!

  I broke off my fruitless search for Chamdar at that point, since it was fairly obvious that I wasn't going to find him. I went on up to Asturia to have a look at Leildorin, and I came away with the knowledge that he was indeed the Wildantor we had been waiting for. Everything was coming together the way it was supposed to, so I crossed Ulgoland to the Vale.

  When I got home, the twins advised me that Ildera would be delivered about midwinter.

  "Polgara's going to move the family not long after the child's birth,"

  Beltira told me.

  "That's probably not a bad idea," I said.

  "We've all been in and out of Annath quite frequently for about fifteen years now, and Chamdar's on the loose out there somewhere. It'll be safer if Pol moves on. Is Alara improving at all?"

  Belkira shook his head sadly.

  "She still refuses to accept the fact that her husband's dead. Polgara's tried everything she can think of to bring her out of it, but nothing's worked yet."

  "A change of scene might bring her around," I suggested.

  "It's hard to say." He didn't sound very hopeful about it.

  The twins and I talked about it at some length, and we agreed that I probably should go to Sendaria and let myself be seen in places other than Annath. The Grolim prophecies, and probably the Ashabine Oracles, as well, were certainly keeping Ctuchik advised, so I was sure that he knew of the Godslayer's imminent birth and the fact that he'd be born in Sendaria. It was time for me to start pulling Chamdar out of position, so I put on my storyteller's costume and went to Sendaria.

  I stopped by the city of Sendar to look in on the new king, Fulrach, and his giddy wife, Layla. Don't misunderstand me here. I love Layla.

  She's probably got the biggest heart in the world, but she was awfully silly as a girl--and almost perpetually pregnant. I sometimes wonder how Fulrach found time to run his kingdom.

  Then I went out into the countryside. I tramped the back roads and country lanes of central Sendaria all during the autumn and early winter of that year, and I'm positive that Chamdar's Grolims were watching my every move. I didn't go out of my way to make it difficult for them.

  It was almost Erastide by now, and my sense of anticipation was growing stronger. Erastide is a major holiday in Sendaria, since it fits so neatly into the traditional ecumenicism of the Sendars. The date of the holiday--midwinter--is really quite arbitrary. The creation of the world didn't happen on a single day, but I guess the clergy just picked a day at random for the yearly celebration. As the holiday approached, I moved from Darine to Erat to Winold with a growing conviction that Erastide this year was going to be something rather special. It was the kind of thing Garion's friend would do.

  I was completely out of touch, of course. We'd had evidence in the past that the Grolims have ways of listening when we communicate with each other in our rather peculiar way, and the upcoming EVENT was so important that we didn't want to give Chamdar anything to work with inadvertently. In retrospect, I can say that our extreme cautiousness was probably a mistake.

  Polgara and I have gone over what happened in Annath that winter again and again and again, and we can now see exactly where we both made our mistakes. The death of Darral should have alerted us, for one thing. As Geran had suspected, that rock slide that had killed his father had not been a simple accident. In some way that we've never been able to determine, Chamdar had located my daughter and the family she'd protected for over thirteen centuries, and Darral's death--murder, I can call it--was just the first step in his elaborate plan.

  Alara's insanity was the second step, I'm afraid, and Pol and I both missed it.

  My daughter tells me that Alara's condition had worsened that fall and that she'd taken to wandering off into the surrounding mountains in search of her husband. I'm sure that Chamdar had a hand in that, too; the Grolims are expert at tampering with the minds of others, after all.

  At any rate, it was on the day before Erastide when Ildera went into false labor, and Polgara had gone from Darral's house to the far end of the village to examine her, and Alara--at Chamdar's instigation, I'm sure --had seized the opportunity to go off into the nearby mountains in search of her husband. Pol returned to Darral's house and found that Alara was gone. It'd happened several times before, and Pol, quite naturally, went out to look for her.

  And that's how Chamdar got Pol out of the way. She's blamed herself about that for years, but it wasn't her fault.

  I'm convinced now that Ildera's false labor was also Chamdar's doing.

  You almost have to admire how carefully he orchestrated the events during those dreadful two days. Once Pol had left the village, Ildera's false labor turned into the real thing. There were other women in the village who knew what to do, of course, and Garion was born shortly after midnight on Erastide.

  And Polgara, searching for Alara, was miles away!

  That was when that familiar voice inside my head alerted me.

  "Belgarath!" It almost shouted,

  "Go to Annath immediately! The Child of Light is in danger!"

  It didn't have to tell me twice. I was in Muros at the time, and it took me about a quarter of an hour to get out of town and sprout feathers. I almost tore my wings off trying to make good time, but I got there too late.

  Following Ildera's delivery, the village women had done what women do after the birth of a child, and then they'd gone home. It was a holiday, after all, and there was cooking to be done. You see how shrewdly Chamdar'd planned everything?

  It was just about dawn, and I was still winging my way in from Muros.

  Geran, Ildera, and Garion were alone in their little house, and that was when Chamdar made his move.

  He set fire to the house.

  It was a stone house, but Chamdar was a Grolim--and stone will burn if you make the fire hot enough.

  To this day, I can't be entirely certain if Chamdar knew what Geran would do once he realized that there was no way he and Ildera could escape. It's entirely possible that he'd given up his wild notion of delivering the Rivan King to Torak and had decided instead to follow Ctuchik's instr
uctions simply to kill Iron-grip's heir.

  The doors and windows of the house were all engulfed in flames, and Geran, probably already in agony, realized that there was no possible way he could save himself or his wife, but there was a faint chance that he could save their son. His tools were in the house, and he was a stonecutter.

  As closely as I can determine, he took up his hammer and chisel and chopped a small hole through the wall down close to the ground.

  Then, even as he was dying, he seized up the blanket-wrapped baby and pushed that precious bundle out through the hole he'd made.

  And that was when I got there, just as dawn was breaking.

  Either Chamdar had known what was going to happen, or he simply seized an opportunity when it presented itself. He dashed in, picked up the blanket-protected infant, and fled back out of range of the fire.

  Even as I was changing form in that snow-clogged street, I took in everything that was happening. I came very close at that point to doing something that's absolutely forbidden. I was right on the verge of obliterating Chamdar with the sheer force of my Will. I think that the only thing that pulled me back from that fatal mistake was the fact that I wanted to kill that murderous Grolim with my bare hands. I howled in fury as I ran through the snow at him, and that gave him just the moment of warning he needed. I'd often wished that I'd kept my mouth shut.

  Chamdar spun around, his eyes wide with fright.

  "You!" he cried as I bore down on him with murder written all over my face. And then he did the only thing he could think of to save his own life.

  He threw the baby at me.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Chamdar's panic-stricken response at that point altered the course of history. In order to save his own life, he threw the infant Garion to safety. Had he been just a little more dedicated, he'd have turned and thrown the baby back into the fire.

  My own dedication was a little stronger. I choked back my homicidal rage long enough to snatch the hurtling little bundle out of the air, and that gave Chamdar enough time to escape. I made a desperate leap to catch Garion, rolling in the dirt in the process, and by the time I looked back, Chamdar was gone. My howl of frustration woke everyone in the still-sleeping village, I think.

  I have it on fairly good authority that it was precisely at that moment that Barak underwent his first metamorphosis up there in Cherek. It was momentary, but he did change over into the Dreadful Bear for a while.

  Garion was in danger at that point, and, all unthinking, Barak responded in the way he was supposed to. He was boar-hunting at the time, and he'd spent the night carousing with some friends. He was still fairly drunk, so all that he really remembers is waking up out in the woods standing over the half-eaten carcass of a wild pig.

  Several of his hunting companions, however, were a bit more sober.

  I'm told that most of them took the pledge at that point and lived out the rest of their lives in total and absolute sobriety.

  "Father!" Polgara's voice came to me.

  "You'd better get back here, Poll Right now!"

  Then I knelt on the ground and unwrapped the baby I'd just grabbed out of midair. So far as I could tell, Garion was all right. He wasn't even crying. His expression was grave as he looked at me, and when our eyes met for the first time, I felt a powerful jolt at the very center of my being.

  I was suddenly filled with a kind of wonder; there was no question whatsoever that he was the one we'd all been waiting for.

  Then I looked at the burning house, hoping that there still might be a chance to save Geran and Ildera, but it was clearly hopeless. I felt no signs of life in the midst of that fire. I broke down and wept.

  Pol found me kneeling in tears beside the baby.

  "What happened, father?" she demanded.

  "It was Chamdar!" I almost shouted at her.

  "Use your eyes, Poll

  What were you thinking of? Why did you go off like that?" I've always regretted that outburst.

  Pol's eyes grew stricken as my accusation struck her full in the face.

  She looked at the blazing house.

  "Is there any hope at all?" she asked me.

  "None. They're both dead."

  And that was when Polgara broke down.

  "I've failed, father!" she wailed.

  "I had the most important task in history, and I failed!"

  I choked back my own grief.

  "There's no time for that now, Poll" I told her sharply.

  "We have to get the baby away from here. Chamdar got away from me, and he could be almost anywhere."

  "Why did you let him escape?"

  "I didn't have any choice. I had to save the baby. There's nothing we can do here. Let's move!"

  She bent and picked up Garion with that peculiar tenderness she's always demonstrated in caring for a long series of infants that were not really her own. When she straightened, her eyes were steely.

  "Chamdar's got a lot to answer for."

  "That he does, Pol, and I'll do my best to make sure that his answering takes at least a week. What happened to Alara?"

  "She walked off the edge of a cliff. She's dead, father."

  My rage flared up again.

  "I'll add another week to what I'm going to do to Chamdar for that," I promised.

  "Good! I'll take the baby. You go after Chamdar."

  I shook my head.

  "Not a chance, Pol. I've got to get you two to safety first. Our main responsibility's wrapped up in that blanket. Let's go."

  Pol and I left the village and took to the woods, avoiding all the roads and anything even remotely resembling a path. It wasn't a pleasant trip at that time of year, and I solved the problem of feeding Garion by the simple expedient of stealing a she-goat from an isolated farmstead.

  Eventually we made our way down out of the mountains, and I took Pol back to her house at Erat. Then I went some distance away and summoned the twins, speaking so cryptically that I wasn't entirely positive that they'd understand what I was saying. I could only hope that they'd get the point when I told them that I needed them at "the rose garden."

  Then I went back to Pol's thicket-enclosed house.

  "They should be along shortly," I told her.

  "I'll stay until they get here."

  "I'll be all right, father. Don't let Chamdar get away."

  "It's more important not to let him get behind me. I'll stay. Don't argue with me about it." I looked out the window at her winter-browned rose thicket.

  "I think your house here is too isolated to be entirely safe.

  Wait out the winter and then go find some remote village or farmstead and submerge yourself among the Sendars. Don't do anything to attract attention until I've dealt with Chamdar."

  "Whatever you say, father."

  It always makes me nervous when Pol takes that submissive attitude.

  The twins had deciphered my message, and they arrived the next morning. I spoke with them briefly, and then I left Erat and went north to Boktor to speak with Hunter. The position, if you can call it that, was held at that time by an obscure filing clerk in the intelligence headquarters, a nondescript fellow named Khonar.

  "I need Prince Kheldar," I told him abruptly.

  "Where is he?"

  Khonar carefully laid down the sheaf of documents he'd been reading.

  "May I ask why. Ancient One?"

  "No, you may not. Where's Silk?"

  "In Tol Honeth, Holy One. He's working for Javelin at the moment."

  He pursed his lips.

  "This is Kheldar's first assignment in the field, you know. He's not very experienced."

  "Is he any good?"

  "We have rather high hopes for him--as soon as he settles down. If it's important, I could go with you. I'm the best, after all."

  "No. I think I'll need you here. Silk's the one I need. There are reasons."

  "Oh," he said.

  "One of those things."

  "Exactly. Have you heard anything
at all about Asharak the Murgo lately?"

  "He was in Arendia no more than a week ago, Ancient One. An agent of ours saw him at the Great Fair."

  I heaved a very large sigh of relief. At least Chamdar wasn't poking around in Sendaria.

  "Which way did he go from the fair?"

  "Southeast--toward the Tolnedran Mountains. Our agent reports that he seemed a little nervous about something."

  "I can imagine," I said grimly.

  "He's done something that offended me. I want to talk with him about it, and he'd rather avoid that conversation--since it's very likely to involve my hanging his entrails on a fence someplace."

  "That's fairly graphic." Nothing startles Hunter.

  "If any of my people come across him, do you want them to kill him?"

  "No. I'll do that myself. Just locate him for me, if you can. Your people are good, but they're no match for Asharak."

  His look grew shrewd.

  "You're being inconsistent. Ancient One. First you ask specifically for a man of twenty or so--no more than a year out of the academy--and then you say that my most experienced agents are no match for the man you're after."

  "Consistency's the defense of small minds, Khonar. Get word to your people in Arendia and Tolnedra. I'll be there long before your messages arrive, and I'll have a look around first. Then I'll want every scrap of information about Asharak that they can lay their hands on."

  He shrugged.

  "If that's the way you want it, Ancient One."

  "It is. I'll be leaving now--and don't waste time trying to have me followed."

  He counterfeited an innocent look.

  "Would I do that, Holy Belgarath?"

  "You wouldn't be doing your job if you didn't."

  I left Boktor that same afternoon, rather ostentatiously going southwest along the Great North Road, and I'm positive that at least one of Hunter's spies was following me. As soon as it grew dark, however, he lost my trail--unless he knew how to fly.

  Although it was midwinter, the weather had cleared over the snow-choked mountains, and I flew over the southeastern edge of Sendaria and went on to Prolgu to advise the Gorim that the Godslayer had come.

  Then I flew on to the Great Fair on the plains of Mimbre to confer with Hunter's chief agent there, a lean Drasnian named Talvar.