Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  ‘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 watching 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 re-locating 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 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 tire-somely 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 gave 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 re-opened the South Caravan Route, and they’re flooding into the west agai
n. 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 dissension in the west to off-set that.’

  ‘You’re getting very good at this, Pol.’

  ‘I’ve had a good teacher.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and 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 go on 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.

  Chapter 47

  I suppose I should have been offended by the twins’ insulting line of speculation, but I guess I really wasn’t. I’d known Garion’s friend for long enough now to have a pretty clear idea of his opinion of me, and I have tried to tamper with things on occasion. I guess it goes back to something I’ve said before; I’m not temperamentally equipped to just sit back and let destiny take its course. No matter how clever I think I am, though, Garion’s friend is always about two jumps ahead of me. I should be used to that by now, I guess, but I’m not.

  A part of the reason that I didn’t get too excited about those unflattering observations was the fact that I was much more excited by the information that we’d finally reached the century during which the Godslayer would be born. I pestered poor Polgara unmercifully during the first three decades of the fifty-fourth century. I’d stop by every two or three months to find out if the heir’s wife was pregnant, and I insisted on being present at every birth in that little family.

  Pol was living in Medalia in central Sendaria at the time, and the current heir’s name was Darral. I was very disappointed when, in 5329, Darral’s wife, Alara, gave birth to a baby boy and the infant’s birth wasn’t accompanied by any of the necessary signs and portents. He wasn’t the Godslayer. Pol named him Geran, and it somehow seemed very right.

  Maybe it was the fact that Darral was a stone-cutter that moved my daughter to relocate the family to the mountain village of Annath, just on the Sendarian side of the Algarian border, in 5834. There were extensive stone-quarries in the area, so Darral could find steady work.

  I had a few qualms about that. The name Annath seemed to send a chill through me for some reason. It wasn’t that Annath was such a bad little town. It was much like every mountain village in the world. It had one street, which is normal for a town built at the bottom of a steep valley, and as it had grown, the houses of the new arrivals were simply added on to each end of that street. It made the town a little strung out, but that didn’t bother anybody. People who live in the mountains are used to walking. The sides of the valley were covered with aspens, and that gave Annath a light and airy atmosphere. Some mountain towns are up to their ears in fir and spruce, and they’re perpetually gloomy as a result. Annath wasn’t like that, but it chilled me all the same.

  I didn’t have time to stand around shivering, though, because I had to go to Boktor for the birth of one of the members of the extended royal family of Drasnia. They named him Prince Kheldar, though he was far down in the line of succession, but his birth and his name filled the air around him with those signs and portents which I’d so sorely missed at the birth of Geran. The Mrin refers to him as the ‘Guide,’ but the rest of the world knows him by the nickname his classmates at the academy of the Drasnian intelligence service gave him when he was a student there – Silk.

  I was kept running for the next few years. The ‘Guide’ was born in 5335, and so was the ‘Blind Man’ – Relg the Ulgo zealot. Then, in 5336, the son of the Earl of Trellheim was born. They named him Barak, but the Mrin calls him the ‘Dreadful Bear.’ In the following year, the ‘Horse Lord’ and the ‘Knight Protector’ – Hettar and Mandorallen – came along. The ‘Companions’ were sprouting all around me, but where was the ‘Godslayer’?

  Then in the spring of 5338, I received an urgent summons from Polgara. I hurried on up to Annath, thinking the worst, but there wasn’t any emergency that I could see. Pol seemed quite calm when she met me near a stone-quarry on the edge of town.

  ‘What’s the problem here, Pol?’ I asked her.

  ‘No problem, father,’ she replied with a slight shrug. ‘I just need somebody to fill in for me for a few months. I have something I have to take care of.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to discuss it.’

  ‘Are we going to play that tired old game again, Pol?’

  ‘It’s not a game, father, and if you’re tired of it, I’ll call the twins instead.’

  ‘You can’t pull them out of the Vale now, Pol! There’s too much going on at the moment for them to go off and leave the Mrin!’

  ‘And uncle Beldin’s keeping watch over Torak. That’s important, too. I guess you’re elected, father – whether you like it or not. You’re not really doing anything important right now, are you? The midwives can deliver these various babies without your supervision. Look after Darral and the little boy, old man – and if you say, “Why me?” I’ll snatch out your beard.’

  ‘I’m not your servant, Pol.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re the servant of something far more important, and so am I. I have an errand to take care of, and you’re supposed to take over here while I’m gone.’

  ‘The Master didn’t say anything to me about this.’

  ‘He’s busy right now, so I’m passing the instructions on for him. Just do it, father. Don’t argue with me.’

  Before I could think up any kind of reply, she blurred and was gone.

  I swore for a while, and then I stamped down into the village. Geran, who was about nine or so, was waiting for me outside the solid house his father had built at the east end of Annath’s single street. ‘Hello, grandfather,’ he greeted me. ‘Did Aunt Pol talk with you?’

  ‘Talk to would come closer, Geran,’ I replied sourly. ‘Did she happen to mention to you where she’s going?’

  ‘Not that I remember, no, but there’s nothing unusual about that. Aunt Pol hardly ever tells us what she’s going to do – or why.’

  ‘You’ve noticed that, I see. Where
’s your mother?’

  ‘She stepped on down to the baker’s shop for a minute. Aunt Pol said that you’d be staying with us for a while, and mother knows how fond you are of pastries.’

  ‘We all have our little weaknesses, I suppose.’

  ‘Mother should be back fairly soon,’ he said, ‘but as long as we’re waiting anyway, do you suppose you could tell me a story?’

  I laughed. ‘I might as well,’ I said. ‘Your Aunt’s nailed me to the ground here until she gets back, so we’ll have lots of time for stories.’ I looked at him a bit more closely. Although, like most of the members of his family, he’d been born with that sandy-colored hair, Geran’s hair was beginning to turn dark. He’d never be as big as Iron-grip had been, but I could already see certain resemblances.

  A little word of caution here, if you don’t mind. When you know that something’s going to happen, you’ll start trying to see signs of its approach in just about everything. Always try to remember that most of the things that happen in this world aren’t signs. They happen because they happen, and their only real significance lies in normal cause and effect. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you start trying to pry the meaning out of every gust of wind or rain-squall. I’m not denying that there might actually be a few signs that you won’t want to miss. Knowing the difference is the tricky part.

  I’ve always enjoyed the company of my grandsons. There’s a peculiarly earnest quality about them that I find appealing. I’m not trying to say that they don’t occasionally do things that are a bit foolish and sometimes downright dangerous – Garion’s encounter with the wild boar in the woods outside Val Alorn sort of leaps to mind – but if you’re willing to follow their occasionally faulty reasoning, you’ll find that, in their own minds at least, most of the things they do are fully justified. The descendants of Iron-grip and Beldaran have always been very serious little boys. A sense of humor might have rounded out their personalities, but you can’t have everything.