"Who else? Men seem to have a need to classify things and put names on them. I think they overlook some very important things that way."
"How is it that you're here? Aren't you - well -?"
"Dead, you mean? Don't be afraid of the word. It's only a word, after all. I suppose I am, though. It doesn't really feel all that much different."
"Doesn't somebody have to do something to bring you back?" he asked. "Like what Aunt Pol did that time when we were fighting with Grul in the mountains of Ulgo?"
"It's not entirely necessary. I can be summoned that way, but I can manage it myself if I have to." She looked at him quizzically. "You're really confused by all this, aren't you?"
"All of what?"
"Everything. Who you are; who we are; what you have to do."
"A little," he admitted.
"Let me see if I can explain it. Take him for instance. I never really saw him as a man, you know. There's something decidedly wolfish about him. I always rather thought that his being born in man-shape had been a mistake of some kind. Maybe it was because of what he had to do. The shape doesn't really matter, though."
"It doesn't?"
"Did you really think it did?" She almost seemed to laugh. "Here. Let me show you. Let's change." She shimmered into air and was standing before him then in the form of a tawny-haired woman with golden eyes. Her gown was very plain and brown.
Garion shrugged himself back into his natural form.
"Am I really any different, Belgarion?" she asked him. "Am I not who I am, whether as wolf or owl or woman?"
And then he understood. "May I call you Grandmother?" he asked her, a bit embarrassed.
"If it makes you happy," she replied. "It's a bit inaccurate, though."
"I know," he said, "but I feel a little more comfortable with it."
"Have you finally accepted who you are?"
"I don't have much choice, do I?"
"But you're afraid of it and what you have to do, is that it?" He nodded mutely.
"You're not going to be alone, you know."
He looked at her sharply. "I thought the Codex said-"
"The Codex doesn't really say everything that's involved," she told him. "Your meeting with Torak will be the coming together of two enormous, opposing forces. The two of you are really just the representatives of those forces. There'll be so much power involved in your meeting that you and Torak will be almost incidental to what's really happening."
"Why couldn't somebody else do it then?" he asked quickly. "Somebody better suited to it?"
"I said almost incidental," she said firmly. "It has to be you, and it's always been Torak. You are the channels through which the forces will collide. When it happens, I think you'll be surprised at how easy it all is."
"Am I going to win?"
"I don't know. The universe itself doesn't know. That's why you have to meet him. If we knew how it would turn out, the meeting wouldn't be necessary." She looked around. "Belgarath's coming back. I'll have to leave you now."
"Why-"
"My presence pains him - more than you could ever know."
"Because-?" He broke off, not knowing how to say it.
"We were closer than others and we were together for a very long time. Sometimes I wish that he could understand that we haven't really been separated, but perhaps it's too early."
"It's been three thousand years, Grandmother."
"What is time to a wolf?" she asked cryptically. "The mating of wolves is permanent, and the grief caused by separation is also permanent. Perhaps someday-" Her voice trailed off wistfully, and then she sighed. "As soon as I leave, change back again. Belgarath will want you to hunt with him. It's sort of a formality. You'll understand when you're back in the shape of a wolf."
Garion nodded and began to form the image of the wolf in his mind. "One other thing, Belgarion."
"Yes, Grandmother?"
"I do love you, you know."
"I love you too, Grandmother."
And then she was gone. Garion sighed and changed himself back into a wolf. And then he went out from that place to join Belgarath in the hunt.
PART FOUR - THE RIVAN QUEEN
Chapter Twenty-two
THE PRINCESS CE'NEDRA Was in a thoughtful, even pensive mood. Much as she had enjoyed the turmoil her periodic outbursts of temper had caused, she rather regretfully concluded that it was probably time to put them aside and make peace with Garion. They were going to be married, after all, and there was no real point in upsetting him any more than absolutely necessary. Her tantrums had established the fact that, although he might outrank her, she would not enter the marriage as his inferior, and that was really all she had wanted anyway. On the whole, the prospect of being married to Garion was not nearly as unpleasant as she pretended. She did love him after all, and now that he understood exactly how things were going to stand between them, everything was likely to be quite satisfactory. She decided to find him that very day and make peace with him.
The largest part of her attention that spring morning had been taken up by a book on protocol and a chart she was carefully drawing up. As Imperial Princess of Tolnedra and Queen of Riva, she would, of course, absolutely outrank every grand duchess of every house in the Empire. She was also fairly sure that she outranked Queen Islena of Cherek and Queen Silar of Algaria. Mayaserana's status as co-ruler of Arendia raised some problems, however. It was entirely possible that she and Mayaserana were equals. Ce'Nedra made a note on a scrap of parchment reminding herself to have Ambassador Valgon direct an inquiry to the chief of protocol in Tol Honeth concerning the matter. She felt a nice little glow as she surveyed the chart. With the exception of Lady Polgara and the motherly little Queen Layla of Sendaria, to whom everyone deferred because she was such a dear, Ce'Nedra concluded that she would in fact outrank or at least equal every noble lady in the West.
Suddenly there was a shattering thunderclap so violent that it shook the very walls of the Citadel. Startled, Ce'Nedra glanced at the window. It was a bright, sunny morning. How could there be thunder? Another rending crash ripped the silence, and there was a frightened babble in the halls. Impatiently, the princess picked up a small silver bell and rang for her maid.
"Go see what's happening," she instructed the girl and returned to her study of the chart she had drawn. But there was another thunderous crash and even more shouting and confusion in the corridor outside. It was impossible! How could she concentrate with all that noise going on? Irritably she rose and went to the door.
People were running - actually fleeing. Just down the hall Queen Layla of Sendaria bolted from the door of Lady Polgara's private apartment, her eyes wide with terror and her crown very nearly falling off.
"What is the matter, your majesty?" Ce'Nedra demanded of the little queen.
"It's Polgara!" Queen Layla gasped, stumbling in her haste to escape. "She's destroying everything in sight!"
"Lady Polgara?"
Another deafening crash sent the little queen reeling, and she clung to Ce'Nedra in terror. "Please, Ce'Nedra. Find out what's wrong. Make her stop before she shakes down the entire fortress."
"Me?"
"She'll listen to you. She loves you. Make her stop."
Without pausing to consider the possible danger, Ce'Nedra went quickly to Lady Polgara's door and glanced inside. The apartment was a total shambles. Furniture was overturned; wall hangings had been ripped down; the windows were shattered and the air was full of smoke. Ce'Nedra had thrown enough tantrums in her life to appreciate artistry when she saw it, but the disaster inside Polgara's apartment was so absolute that it went beyond art into the realms of natural catastrophe. Lady Polgara herself stood, wild-eyed and dishevelled in the center of the room, cursing incoherently in a dozen languages at once. In one hand she held a crumpled sheet of parchment; her other hand was raised like a claw before her, half clenched about an incandescent mass of blazing energy that she seemed to have summoned out of air itself and which she now fed
with her own fury. The princess stood in awe as Polgara began a fresh tirade. The dreadful cursing began in a low contralto and rose in an awful crescendo into the upper registers and beyond. As she reached the limits of her voice, she began slashing the air with the blazing mass in her hand, punctuating each curse with a crackling burst of raw energy that sizzled from between her fingers like a bolt of lightning to shatter whatever her eyes fell upon. With a series of vile oaths, she detonated six teacups in a row into shards, then quite methodically she went back down the line, exploding the saucers upon which they had sat. Almost as an afterthought, she blew the table into splinters.
Ce'Nedra heard a strangled gasp directly behind her. King Anheg, the blood drained from his face, looked once through the door, then turned and ran.
"Lady Polgara," Ce'Nedra remonstrated to the sorceress, trying not so much to reason with her as to minimize the destruction.
Polgara shattered four priceless vases standing on the mantelpiece with four precisely separate explosions. Outside the window, the bright spring morning vanished as if the sun had suddenly been extinguished, and there was a sullen rumble of thunder that Ce'Nedra prayed devoutly was natural.
"Whatever is the matter?" the princess asked, hoping to draw the enraged sorceress into explanation rather than more curses. It was the curses that had to be headed off. Polgara seemed to have a deep-seated need to emphasize her oaths with explosions.
Polgara, however, did not reply. Instead she merely threw the parchment at Ce'Nedra, turned, and blew a marble statue into fine white gravel. Wild-eyed, she wheeled about, looking for something else to break, but there was very little left in the smoking room that she had not already reduced to rubble.
"No!" Ce'Nedra cried out sharply as the raging woman's eyes fell on the exquisite crystal wren Garion had given her. The princess knew that Polgara valued the glass bird more than anything else she possessed, and she leaped forward to protect the delicate piece.
"Get it," Polgara snarled at her from between clenched teeth. "Take it out of my sight." Her eyes burned with a terrible need to destroy something else. She spun and hurled the incandescent ball of fire she had wielded out through the shattered window. The explosion, when it burst in the suddenly murky air outside, was ghastly. With her fists clenched tightly at her sides, she raised her distorted face and began to curse again. From roiling black clouds that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, shattering bolts of lightning began to rain down on the island. No longer satisfied with localized destruction, Polgara expanded her rage to rake the Isle and the Sea of the Winds with sizzling fire and ear-splitting thunder. Then, with a dreadful intensity, she raised one fist and suddenly opened it. The downpour of rain she called was beyond belief. Her glittering eyes narrowed, and she raised her other fist. The rain instantly turned to hail-great, jagged chunks of ice that crashed and splintered against the rocks to fill the air with flying fragments and thick steam.
Ce'Nedra caught up the wren, stooped to grab the rumpled piece of parchment from the floor, and then she fled.
King Anheg poked his frightened face from around a corner. "Can't you stop her?" he demanded in a shaking voice.
"Nothing can stop her, your Majesty."
"Anheg! Get in here!" Polgara's voice rang above the thunder and the crashing deluge of hail that shook the Citadel.
"Oh, Belar," King Anheg muttered devoutly, casting his eyes skyward even as he hurried toward Polgara's door.
"Get word to Val Alorn immediately!" she commanded him. "My father, Silk, and Garion slipped out of the Citadel last night. Get your fleet out and bring them back! I don't care if you have to take the world apart stone by stone. Find them and bring them back!"
"Polgara, I-" The King of Cherek faltered.
"Don't stand there gaping like an idiot! Move!"
Carefully, almost with a studied calm, the Princess Ce'Nedra handed the glass wren to her frightened maid. "Put this someplace safe," she said. Then she turned and went back to the center of the storm. "What was that you just said?" she asked Polgara in a level voice.
"My idiot father, Garion, and that disgusting thief decided last night to go off on their own," Polgara replied in an icy voice made even more terrible by the superhuman control that held it in.
"They did what?" Ce'Nedra asked flatly.
"They left. They sneaked away during the night."
"Then you must go after them."
"I can't, Ce'Nedra." Polgara spoke as if explaining something to a child. "Someone has to stay here. There are too many things here that could go wrong. He knows that. He did it deliberately. He's trapped me here."
"Garion?"
"No, you silly girl! My father!" And Polgara began cursing again, each oath punctuated with a crash of thunder.
Ce'Nedra, however, scarcely heard her. She looked around. There was really nothing left to break in here. "You'll excuse me, I hope," she said. Then she turned, went back to her own rooms, and began breaking everything she could lay her hands on, screeching all the while like a Camaar fishwife.
Their separate rages lasted for several hours, and they rather carefully avoided each other during this period. Some emotions needed to be shared, but insane fury was not one of those. Eventually, Ce'Nedra felt she had exhausted the possibilities of her extended outburst, and she settled into the icy calm of one who has been mortally insulted. No matter what face his illiterate note put on the matter, it would be at the very most a week before the entire world knew that Garion had jilted her. The flight of her reluctant bridegroom would become a universal joke. It was absolutely intolerable!
She would meet the world, however, with a lifted chin and an imperious gaze. However she might weep and storm and rage in private, the face she presented to the world would betray no hint of how deeply she had been injured. All that was left for her was her pride, and she would never abandon that.
The Lady Polgara, however, seemed to feel no need for such imperial reserve. Once her initial fury had subsided to the degree that she allowed her private thunderstorm to pass, a few hardy souls assumed that the worst of it was over. The Earl of Trellheim went to her in an attempt to mollify her. He left her apartment moments later at a run with her crackling vituperation sizzling in the air about his ears. Barak was pale and shaken when he reported back to the others. "Don't go near her," he advised in a frightened voice. "Do whatever she says as quickly as you can, and stay absolutely out of her sight."
"Isn't she calming down at all?" King Rhodar asked.
"She's finished breaking the furniture," Barak replied. "I think she's getting ready to start on people."
Thereafter, each time Polgara emerged from her apartment, the warning spread instantly, and the halls of Iron-grip's Citadel emptied. Her commands, delivered usually by her maid, were all variations of the initial orders she had given King Anheg. They were to find the vagrant trio and bring them back to face her.
In the days that followed, Princess Ce'Nedra's first rage settled into a sort of peevishness that made people avoid her almost as much as they avoided Polgara - all but gentle Adara, who endured the tiny girl's outbursts with a calm patience. The two of them spent most of their time sitting in the garden adjoining the royal apartments where Ce'Nedra could give vent to her emotions without fear of being overheard.
It was five days after Garion and the others had left before Ce'Nedra discovered the full implications of their departure.
The day was warm - the spring came eventually even to a bleak place like Riva - and the small bit of lawn in the center of the garden was a lush green. Pink, blue, and flaming red flowers nodded in their beds as bright yellow bees industriously carried kisses from blossom to blossom. Ce'Nedra, however, did not want to think about kisses. Dressed in her favorite pale green Dryad tunic, she bit rather savagely at an unoffending lock of hair and spoke to the patient Adara at length about the inconstancy of men.
It was about midafternoon when Queen Layla of Sendaria found them there. "Oh, there you are," t
he plump little queen bubbled at them. As always, her crown was a little awry. "We've been looking all over for you."
"Why?" was Ce'Nedra's somewhat ungracious reply.
Queen Layla stopped and looked critically at the princess. "My," she said, "aren't we cross today? Just what is your problem, Ce'Nedra? You've barely been civil for days now."
Ce'Nedra caught Adara's warning look to the queen, and that irritated her all the more. Her response was chilly. "I'm finding the experience of being jilted to be just a bit annoying, your Highness," she said.
Queen Layla's sunny face hardened. "Would you excuse us, Adara?" she asked.
"Of course, your Highness," Adara replied, rising quickly. "I'll be inside, Ce'Nedra," she said and went gracefully out of the garden. Queen Layla waited until the girl was out of earshot, then sat down on a marble bench. "Come here, Ce'Nedra," she said firmly.
The princess looked at the motherly little woman, a bit startled by the iron in her voice. Obediently she went to the bench and sat.
"You really should stop interpreting everything that happens in the world as a personal insult, you know," Layla told her. "That's a very unbecoming habit. What Garion, Belgarath, and Kheldar did has absolutely nothing to do with you." She looked sternly at Ce'Nedra. "Do you know anything at all about the Prophecy?"
"I've heard about it," Ce'Nedra sulked. "Tolnedrans don't really believe in that sort of thing."
"Perhaps that's the problem," Layla said. "I want you to listen very carefully, Ce'Nedra. You may not believe, but you will understand." The queen thought for a moment. "The Prophecy clearly states that when the Rivan King returns, Torak will awaken."
"Torak? That's nonsense. Torak's dead."
"Don't interrupt, dear," Layla told her. "You travelled with them for all that time and you still don't understand? For a little girl who seems so bright, you're remarkably dense."
Ce'Nedra flushed at that.
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