Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  ‘He’s got a point there,’ Cho-Ram said thoughtfully. ‘Brand and I get along fairly well, so I think Algaria can join Cherek in this. I’ll acknowledge Brand’s Overlordship too.’

  Those idiots! Brand wasn’t the one the Mrin was talking about! It was Garion, and he hadn’t even been born yet!

  ‘I suppose we might as well make it unanimous,’ Rhodar chimed in. ‘The Children of the Bear-God speak as one. Brand is Overlord.’

  ‘Aren’t we going a little fast here?’ Ormik protested. ‘I’m part Alorn myself, and I’d be more than willing to accept Brand as Overlord. I’ll go wherever he tells me to go, but I think I’d like to hear from Tolnedra, Ulgo, Arendia, and Nyissa before I start making plans for a coronation. We’ve got all the armies of the west camped right here. If those of us who happen to be Alorn rush into something exotic and offend the non-Alorn rulers, we could have a second battle of Vo Mimbre before the blood even dries off the grass from the first one.’

  Then the oily, reptilian Podiss, the emissary of Queen Salmissra, rose. ‘The king of the Sendars speaks wisely. Much have I marveled at the readiness of sovereign kings to submit to the Overlordship of a man of no known heritage. Brand isn’t even the King of the Isle of the Winds. He’s nothing more than a caretaker. I don’t even have to send to Sthiss Tor for instructions about this. Eternal Salmissra will never swear fealty to a nameless Alorn butcher.’

  ‘You Nyissans have very short memories, Podiss,’ Eldrig said angrily. ‘If you haven’t got a history book with you, I’ll send for one. You might want to look over the chapter that deals with what happened to Nyissa in the year four thousand and two after Salmissra murdered King Gorek.’

  Then Mergon stood up. ‘Let’s not start threatening each other, gentlemen. This is supposed to be a peace conference, remember?’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘I yield to no one in my admiration for the Rivan Warder. I greet Lord Brand in the name of my emperor, and extend him an invitation to come to Tol Honeth so that Ran Borune may honor him as befits the foremost warrior of the west. Let us not, however, rush into unchangeable decisions in the first flush of admiration and gratitude. I’m sure that noble Brand would be the first to agree that the arts of war and the arts of peace have very little in common, and they’re seldom linked in one man. A battle is soon over, but the burdens of peace grow heavier with each passing year,’ He paused again, and then he spoke rather firmly. ‘I’m troubled by this talk of Aloria, gentlemen. I’ve heard of Cherek and Drasnia and Algaria, and all the world knows about the Isle of the Winds and unassailable Riva. But where is this Aloria? What are its boundaries? Where is its capital? There hasn’t been a place called Aloria since the days of Cherek Bear-shoulders. I’m startled by this sudden re-emergence of a kingdom long buried in the mists of antiquity. Imperial Tolnedra must deal with mundane reality. We can’t send emissaries to the court of the King of the Fairies. We can’t conclude a treaty with the Emperor of the Moon. We can only have commerce with earthly kingdoms. Myth and legend, however grand, can’t enter into the affairs of the empire; not if we want to keep any kind of stability in the world.’

  I could see Eldrig’s face getting redder and redder. Mergon was definitely pushing his luck.

  ‘I’m puzzled about something else as well,’ Ran Borune’s spokesman went on. ‘Why have you all suddenly decided to disregard long-standing covenants and treaties? You’ve all signed those treaties with the empire, and now you’re just throwing them out the window. Is it really wise to offend Ran Borune? Particularly in view of the size of his army?’

  ‘Listen to me, Mergon,’ Eldrig growled pugnaciously. ‘Aloria’s where I say it is, and I’ve got a big enough army to back me up. If you want to go back to Tol Honeth to report what we’ve decided here, go right ahead. My warboats move fast enough that I’ll probably be there before you make it. If I have to, I’ll explain the situation to Ran Borune myself. Then I’ll go on to Sthiss Tor and do the same for Salmissra.’

  ‘That should do, Eldrig,’ the Gorim said at that point. ‘We’re starting to approach that second battle of Vo Mimbre that King Ormik mentioned. One battle here is quite enough, wouldn’t you say? You Alorn kings want to appoint Brand Overlord of the West – because he’s an Alorn. Tolnedra and Nyissa don’t mind honoring him, but they’re not really interested in submitting to his Overlordship – also because he’s an Alorn. Let’s back away from this incipient war. We’ve managed to get enough people killed already. The plain fact is that no one man can rule the entire west, so let’s just drop that notion right here and now. I think I know Brand well enough to know that he wouldn’t accept that crown if you offered it to him.’

  ‘Well put, Holy Gorim,’ Brand agreed fervently. ‘I hate to disappoint you, Eldrig, but I’m not this Overlord of yours. Go find somebody else to saddle with the title.’

  ‘We can’t just do nothing, Brand!’ Eldrig protested. ‘You killed Torak. We’ve got to find some way to honor you for that. How about a contribution from all our treasuries or something?’

  ‘A suggestion, perhaps?’ Gorim interposed. ‘Why not give Brand an imperial Tolnedran princess to be his wife? That’s probably the greatest honor Tolnedra can bestow.’

  ‘I’ve already got a wife, Holy One,’ Brand told him, ‘and only a madman wants more than one. I don’t need a crown; I don’t need a Tolnedran princess; and I don’t need the treasuries of the other kingdoms. What do Rivans need with treasure?’ He put his hand on his shield. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve already got one, and our race has guarded it with our lives for over two thousand years now. Would you inflict another treasure on us to guard? How many lives do we have? The Gorim’s right. I can’t sit in Riva and run the world. If something came up somewhere in Nyissa or down in the Caves of Ulgo, it’d be months before I even heard about it. Not only that, I serve Belar. I think we might offend Nedra and Issa and Chaldan if I assumed some kind of Overlordship, not to mention that UL might object. If there is going to be an Overlord, the appointment’s going to have to come from the Gods, not from men.’

  It was at that point that I decided to put down this nonsense for good and all. I stood up.

  ‘Gladly will we hear the counsel of the Eternal Man,’ Gorim murmured.

  ‘Glad or not, you’re going to get it,’ I said bluntly. ‘What in the names of all the Gods possessed you to come up with this absurd idea, Eldrig? Brand’s not the one who’s going to be the Overlord. Surely you realize that.’

  Eldrig looked a little embarrassed. ‘Well, he did beat Torak, didn’t he? I thought I could take it one step further, is all.’ Then he threw up his hands. ‘All right, I was pushing. I’ll admit it. I was hoping that this was the final EVENT. I wanted it to happen during my lifetime, so I thought I might be able to bend the prophecy a little. I was probably wrong. I’m sorry. The Mrin could mean Brand, though, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Beltira told him. ‘The Rivan King is going to be Overlord, not the Rivan Warder.’

  ‘Well,’ Eldrig floundered weakly, ‘I thought that Brand was almost the same as a king.’

  ‘Not from where I sit, I’m not,’ Brand told him.

  ‘Just forget that I even mentioned it,’ Eldrig gave up.

  ‘You can count on that,’ I said.

  ‘The Overlord will come, though, Belgarath,’ the Gorim reminded me.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Will you be here to guide him?’

  ‘Probably so. I don’t feel any symptoms of incipient mortality coming over me yet. Pol and I’ll take care of it when the time comes. We’ve been at it for a long time now.’

  ‘The Mrin does say that the Overlord’s going to marry a Tolnedran Princess, you know.’

  ‘I know all about it, Gorim. I’m the one who introduced the Dryad strain into the Borune line to get ready for it.’

  ‘What is this Mrin thing you people keep talking about?’ Mergon demanded. ‘I thought that the Mrin was a river in Drasnia.’

  ‘It�
�s an Alorn holy book, your Excellency,’ Pol told him. ‘It foretells the future.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lady Polgara, but nothing foretells the future.’

  ‘It hasn’t been wrong yet, your Excellency,’ Beltira disagreed.

  ‘That’s probably because it’s so general that it doesn’t really mean anything,’ Mergon scoffed.

  ‘No, actually it’s very specific. It’s hard to read, but once you unravel it, it tells you exactly what’s going to happen.’

  ‘Only if you believe, Master Beltira. I’ve seen the holy books of other races, and they mean absolutely nothing to me.’

  ‘That’s probably Nedra’s doing, Mergon,’ I said. ‘Nedra doesn’t like mysticism of any kind. You’ve got a very practical God. Let’s move along, gentlemen. If we’re going to come up with a set of accords here, we’d better get at it – unless you’d all like to just sign blank pieces of parchment. I could fill in the contents later, if you’d rather do it that way.’

  ‘Nice try, Belgarath,’ Beldin chuckled. ‘Just exactly what has to be in these accords?’

  I turned to the twins. ‘You two are the experts. What does the Mrin say? How much should we nail down, and how much can we just leave open?’

  ‘I think we’ll want to establish the marriage of the king and the princess,’ Beltira replied. ‘That almost has to be agreed upon.’

  ‘And the Overlordship as well,’ Belkira added. ‘That must be in the accords so that there won’t be any question about it when the time comes. The Rivan King’s going to have to give certain orders, and the kings of the other nations are going to have to obey them. Otherwise Torak’s going to win next time.’

  ‘ Will you people talk sense?’ Mergon burst out. ‘There is no Rivan King. That line died with King Gorek.’

  ‘Oh, just tell him, Belgarath,’ Rhodar said disgustedly. ‘He’ll argue about it for a week if you don’t.’

  ‘And have him spread the information all over Tol Honeth? Be serious, Rhodar.’

  ‘I’m a diplomat, Belgarath,’ Mergon said in an offended tone of voice. ‘I know how to keep secrets.’

  ‘You might as well go ahead and tell him, father,’ Polgara told me. ‘He’s going to start making some educated guesses anyway before we go much further with this.’

  I looked around at the assembled kings and emissaries. ‘I’ll have an oath of silence on this, gentlemen,’ I said. Those of you with ambassadorial rank can tell your rulers, but I don’t want this going any further.’ I gave them all a hard look, and they mumbled their agreement. ‘To put it very shortly,’ I told them, ‘the Rivan line did not die out when Gorek was killed. One of his grandsons survived. The line’s still intact, and someday one of that line will return to Riva and resume his throne. That’s the information that doesn’t leave this room. We’ve had enough trouble protecting those heirs without their existence becoming general knowledge.’

  I’m not really positive that Mergon believed me, but Eldrig and the other Alorns were feeling muscular, so he behaved as if he believed. He really didn’t have anything to lose, after all. If I were lying to him, there’d never be a Rivan King to marry one of those precious imperial princesses, nor would anyone ever become Overlord of the West, so he went along with us, largely to pacify the Alorns, I believe.

  Podiss, however, was another matter. Nyissans tend to be a little touchy about the fact that their kingdom is the only one ruled by a woman, and any kind of disparagement of Salmissra, real or imagined, raises screams of outrage. To put it rather bluntly, however, Nyissa doesn’t loom very large in the family of nations. It’s a swampy backwater with a small population and aside from the slave-trade, it doesn’t have much in the way of commerce. When it became more and more obvious that the accords weren’t even going to mention Nyissa, Podiss lost his temper. ‘And what of my queen, Eternal Salmissra?’ he demanded. ‘What voice will she have in this ordering of the world?’

  ‘Not a very loud one,’ Eldrig said, ‘at least not if I can help it, she won’t. She won’t have to do anything except sign the document, Podiss – that and keep her nose out of matters that don’t concern her.’ Eldrig wasn’t exactly what you’d call the soul of diplomacy.

  ‘I’ll have no further part in this,’ Podiss said, rising to his feet. ‘And I won’t insult my queen by carrying this absurdity to her. Write down anything you wish, gentlemen, but Salmissra won’t sign it.’

  This was the point in his account of the conference where Davoul the Lame lost his head entirely. His epic blandly asserts that Polgara sprang to her feet, turned Podiss into a snake, changed herself into an owl, and carried him off into the sky. I think it was the fact that Davoul suddenly realized that he’d gone for ten whole pages without any magic that pushed him over the edge. Polgara did do something to Podiss, but it didn’t involve anything like that. It was probably a lot worse, but nobody else at the conference saw it. She simply went to where Podiss was standing and did much the same thing to him as she’d done to Eldallan in the Asturian forest. I haven’t any idea at all of what she showed him – he didn’t scream at all – but whatever it was made him pale and very cooperative.

  It also persuaded Mergon to keep his objections to himself from then on.

  It took us another day or so to finish the Accords of Vo Mimbre, and another day for a Mimbrate scribe to cast them into ‘high style.’ Since the Mimbrates were our hosts, it was only polite to let them produce the final version. When that was all finished, the Gorim took up his copy, rose to his feet and read to us. ‘These then are the Accords which we have reached here at Vo Mimbre. The nations of the west will prepare themselves for the return of the Rivan King, for in the day of his return shall Torak awaken and come again upon us, and none but the Rivan King may overcome him and save us from his foul enslavement. And whatsoever the Rivan King commands, that shall we do. And he shall have an Imperial Princess of Tolnedra to wife and shall have Empire and Dominion in the West. And whosoever breaketh these accords, will we do war upon him and scatter his people and pull down his cities and lay waste his lands. We pledge it here in honor of Brand, who hath overthrown Torak and bound him in sleep until the One comes who might destroy him. So be it.’

  Eldrig leaned back in his chair. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘now that’s taken care of, I guess we can all go home.’

  ‘Not quite yet, your Majesty,’ Wildantor disagreed. ‘There’s still a royal wedding in the works.’

  ‘I’d almost forgotten about that,’ Eldrig said. ‘Are those two still screaming at each other?’

  ‘No,’ Pol told him. ‘The screaming stopped a few days ago. The last time I listened at the door, there was a lot of giggling going on. Evidently Mayaserana’s a bit ticklish.’

  ‘I wonder what they can be doing,’ the Gorim said mildly.

  ‘We can probably start our armies marching toward home,’ Rhodar put in. ‘Ordinary soldiers aren’t really very interested in royal weddings, and I’d like to have my pike-men at the Drasnian border before the end of summer.’

  ‘I can have my war-boats take them to Kotu, if you’d like,’ Eldrig offered.

  ‘Thanks all the same, Eldrig, but Drasnians aren’t very good sailors. I’m fairly sure that my pikemen would rather walk.’

  Then Brand sent for Korodullin and Mayaserana. They were both blushing when they were escorted into his presence. ‘Have you two more or less settled your differences?’ he asked them.

  ‘We really should apologize, Lord Brand,’ Mayaserana said in a tone of sweet reasonableness and a rosy blush. ‘We both behaved very badly when you made that suggestion.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, Mayaserana,’ Brand forgave her. ‘I take it you’ve had a change of heart.’

  ‘The sweet light of reason hath opened our eyes, Lord Brand,’ Korodullin assured him, also blushing, ‘and our duty to Arendia hath touched our hearts and caused our animosity to fade. Though we still have our differences, we are both willing to set them aside for the sake of our homeland.’<
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  ‘I was almost certain you’d see it that way,’ Polgara said with a faint smile.

  Mayaserana blushed again. ‘And when would you like to have us married, Lord Brand?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Brand replied. ‘Have either of you got anything urgent to take care of tomorrow?’

  ‘What’s wrong with today?’ she countered. Patience, it appeared, wasn’t Mayaserana’s strong suit, and she had things on her mind.

  ‘I think we could arrange that,’ Brand told her. ‘Somebody go get a priest of Chaldan.’

  ‘There might be a problem there, Lord Brand,’ Wildantor said dubiously. ‘Our priests are just as partisan as the rest of us. The priest might refuse to perform the ceremony.’

  ‘Not for very long, my friend,’ Mandor disagreed, ‘not if he values his continued good health.’

  ‘You’d actually hit a priest?’ Wildantor asked.

  ‘My duty to Arendia would compel it of me,’ Mandor said, ‘though it would of course, rend mine heart.’

  ‘Oh, of course. Let’s go find one, shall we? And you can explain things to him while we’re dragging him back here.’

  And so Korodullin and Mayaserana were married, and Arendia was technically united. There was still a certain amount of bickering between Mimbrates and Asturians, of course, but the open battles more or less came to an end.