‘Yes, I know. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you, Polgara. All this brooding about knives and meat-hooks and cheese-graters is exactly what you were sent to Arendia to put a stop to. Nerasin murdered your friends, so now you’re going to murder him. Then one of his relatives will murder you. Then your father will murder somebody else in Nerasin’s family. Then somebody will murder your father. Then Beldin will murder somebody else. And it will go on and on and on until nobody’s even able to remember who Asrana and Mandorin were. That’s what blood feuds are all about, Pol. Congratulations. You’re an Arend to your fingertips, now.’
‘But I loved them, mother!’
‘It’s a noble emotion, but wading in blood isn’t the best way to express it.’
That’s when I started to weep again.
‘I’m glad we had a chance to have this little chat, Pol,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Oh, incidentally, you’re going to need Nerasin a little later, so killing him and chopping him up for stew-meat wouldn’t really be appropriate. Be well, Polgara.’ And then she was gone.
I sighed and put all the kitchen implements back where I’d found them.
The funeral of Asrana and Mandorin was held at Vo Mandor in the autumn of 2327, and Alleran and I, quite naturally, attended. The Arendish religion isn’t good at funerals. Chaldan’s a warrior God, and his priests are far more interested in vengeance than in comforting survivors. Perhaps I’m being a little picky, but it seems to me that a funeral sermon based on the theme, ‘I’ll get even with you for that, you dirty rascal’ lacks a dignified, elegiac tone.
The blood-thirsty ranting of the priest of Chaldan who conducted the funeral seemed to move Alleran and Corrolin, though, because after the funeral and the entombment of Mandorin and Asrana, they got down to some serious plotting about appropriate responses to Nerasin’s atrocious behavior. I chose to forego participation in this little exercise of pure Arendishness. I’d put my own Arendish impulses away along with the cheese-grater.
I wandered instead about the grim, gloomy halls of Mandolin’s fortress, and I ultimately ended up in Asrana’s dressing-room, where her fragrance still faintly lingered. Asrana had never really been what you’d call tidy, and she’d left things scattered all over her dressing table. Without even thinking, I started to straighten up, setting jars and bottles in a neat row along the bottom of her mirror, brushing away the faint dusting of face powder, and placing her combs and brushes at an aesthetically pleasing angle. I was in the act of setting down her favorite ivory comb when I changed my mind. I kept it instead, and I’ve carried it with me for all these years. It lies right now on my own dressing table, not fifteen feet from where I sit at this very moment.
Of course, I was not the only one who’d been totally incensed by the murders. As I mentioned, both Corrolin and Alleran took them very personally, and the simple blockade of the borders of Asturia tightened, becoming almost like a noose, and large raiding parties swept out of both Mimbre and Wacune, savaging Asturia with a kind of studied brutality.
Despite my best efforts, the Arendish civil wars had taken up almost exactly where they’d left off when I’d first gone there. The thing they called ‘Polgara’s Peace’ had fallen apart.
The situation in Asturia was growing more desperate as the months dragged by. Corrolin’s Mimbrate knights rode almost at will through the agricultural south and west of the Asturian duchy, and Wacite archers, who were at least as proficient as their Asturian counterparts, quite literally killed everything that moved along Asturia’s eastern frontier. At first this random violence seemed senseless, but when I berated Alleran for renewing the war, he gave me that innocent look that Arends are so good at and said, ‘We aren’t making war on the Asturians, Aunt Pol. We’re making war on their food. Eventually, they’ll get hungry enough to take care of Nerasin all by themselves.’
It was a brutal, ugly way to make war, but nobody’s ever said that wars are pretty.
Nerasin grew increasingly desperate as food grew scarcer and scarcer on the tables in Vo Astur. His solution to his problem should have been obvious, but unfortunately, I completely missed it.
It all happened on a blustery night when I’d decided to stay home rather than go to the palace. The palace was the nerve-center of the ‘food-fight’, and the noise of messengers running through the halls waving dispatches announcing that ten Asturians cows and fourteen of their pigs had been killed that day was starting to get on my nerves. To my way of looking at things, the assassination of cattle hardly constituted a major victory, so I decided that I’d earned a quiet evening at home. I took a long, leisurely bath, ate a light supper, and retired early with a good book.
It was sometime after midnight when I was somewhat rudely awakened by Killane’s shouting. My personal maid – Killane’s youngest sister Rana, incidentally – was trying valiantly to keep him out of my bedroom, and he was just as valiantly trying to get in.
I muttered something that I won’t repeat here, climbed out of bed, and pulled on my robe. ‘What’s going on out here?’ I demanded crossly, jerking open my bedroom door.
‘It’s me oafish brother, me Lady,’ the slender little Rana said in disgust. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised at all t’ find that he’s been drinkin’.’
‘Go along w’ y’ now, Rana,’ Killane told her. ‘There be trouble at th’ palace, Lady Polgara,’ he said to me. ‘Y’d better be after puttin’ on some clothes. His Grace’s messenger’s waitin’ fery’ out in th’ sittin’ room.’
‘What’s happened, Killane?’
‘His Grace’s son’s bin spirited away by th’ cursed Asturians, me Lady, an’ th’ Duke wants y’ to come t’ th’ palace immediately.’
Tell the messenger I’ll be right with him,’ I said. Then I closed the door and pulled on my clothes hurriedly, muttering curses under my breath. We’d had plenty of evidence to prove just how unprincipled Nerasin was. Why hadn’t I anticipated his next move?
Abduction has long played a significant role in international politics – as Garion and Ce’Nedra can testify – but the removal of Duke Alleran’s two-year-old son from the palace in Vo Wacune was the first time I’d ever encountered the practice. Some abductions are perpetrated purely for the ransom, and those are rather easily dealt with. A political abduction, however, doesn’t involve money, but behavior. A message had been found on the young Kathandrion’s bed, and it was fairly blunt. It told Alleran that if he didn’t pull back from Asturia’s eastern frontier, he’d never see his son alive again. Mayaserell was in hysterics, and Alleran wasn’t much better, so there wasn’t really much point in talking with them. I provided the court physicians with a compound of certain herbs that was strong enough to fell a horse, and then I spoke at some length with the young duke’s advisors. ‘We don’t have much choice,’ I told them finally. ‘Do as that message demands. Then send a dispatch to Duke Corrolin in Vo Mimbre. Tell him what’s happened here, and also tell him that I’m taking care of it. I want everybody to keep his nose out of this. I’ll deal with it, and I don’t want any enthusiasts running around cluttering things up for me.’ Then I went home to think my way through the situation.
The short-range solution would have been quite simple. Clearly, I wouldn’t be dealing with ‘talented’ people here, and locating the place where little Kathandrion was being held wouldn’t have been difficult, but then we’d have all had to sit around holding our breath while we waited for Nerasin’s next move. Clearly, I’d have to come up with something that would permanently keep the nominal Duke of Asturia out of mischief. Killing him would be permanent, of course, but then we’d have to deal with his successor. After what Nerasin had done to Asrana and Mandorin, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about keeping him alive, but the politics of the situation – and mother’s cryptic statement that someday I’d need Nerasin – strongly suggested that the best hope for restoring peace to Arendia lay in compelling Nerasin to do exactly what I told him to do for the rest of his life and then insuring as best
I could that he lived well into his eighties. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the rescue of Alleran’s son and the ‘civilizing’ of Nerasin should not be two separate acts, but should rather be combined.
Nerasin’s hired abductors could be holding the boy anywhere, but, in reality, that didn’t matter. I could get exactly what I wanted in Vo Astur itself. I didn’t have to tear the woods apart in a desperate search. Once I had Nerasin under my thumb, I could arrange for the boy’s return without endangering him or savaging vast tracts of Asturian real estate.
My next problem was standing just outside the door to my library when I prepared to leave the next morning. His red fringe of a beard was bristling, his arms were crossed defiantly, and his expression was adamantine. ‘I’ll not be after lettin’ y’ go off by yerself, Lady-O,’ he told me flatly.
‘Oh, Killane,’ I said, ‘be serious. I won’t be in any danger.’
‘Yer not goin’ off alone!’
‘How are you going to stop me?’ I asked mildly.
‘I’ll burn yer house down if y’ even so much as try!’
‘You wouldn’t!’
‘Try me!’
Now that was something I hadn’t anticipated. Killane had found my soft spot. I loved my house, and he knew it. His threat made me go cold all over. Still, I had to get to Vo Astur as quickly as possible, and that meant that I almost had to use the form of a falcon. No falcon alive could carry a Wacite Arend weighing just over twelve stone, however.
The answer, of course, was fairly simple, and it would almost certainly teach my belligerent friend not to deliver ultimatums to me any more. I’d never done it before, but there’s a first time for everything, I guess. I knew what was involved, and I was confident that I could improvise should the occasion demand it.
‘All right, Killane,’ I said in feigned surrender, ‘if you’re going to insist –’
‘I am,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ll be after saddlin’ our horses, then.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We won’t be traveling on horseback. Let’s go out into the garden.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘You’ll see.’
I’ll admit that it was just a bit tricky. I knew what Killane looked like, but I didn’t have a complete grasp of exactly how he felt– his own sense of his being, I suppose you could call it. Our gender differences complicated things just a bit, but I set that part aside. Killane’s gender wasn’t going to be particularly important for a while. He stood near a bed of winter-dormant rose-bushes with a slightly apprehensive look on his face, realizing, I suspect, that he might have pushed me just a trifle too far.
Then he started slightly, seeing something that wasn’t really there near his left foot. He raised the foot, obviously intending to tramp on what he thought he was seeing.
‘Leave it alone, Killane,’ I said sharply to him. ‘I need it just now. Look at it very closely, however.’
He stared intently at the illusion.
I had to filter the release of my will through his consciousness, and that was no mean trick. So far as I can recall, it was the first time I’d ever actually funneled my will through the mind of someone else. When I had everything firmly in place, I almost absently picked up a rock that weighed perhaps two pounds, and then I let my built-up Will go in the direction I had it pointed, and even as the transfer was taking place I prudently set the rock down on the tail of the small field-mouse into which the entirety of Killane’s awareness and body were being transferred. There was a fair chance that the transformation might make him a bit hysterical, and I didn’t really have the time to hunt him down.
The squeaking he made was pathetic, and the poor little creature’s beady eyes were almost starting out of its head. I pushed back my instinctive sympathy, however. Killane had insisted, after all.
Then I went falcon, and that definitely increased the level of squeaking. I more or less ignored those shrill cries of absolute terror and strutted – that’s the only word for it – over to one of the fruit-trees, selected a winter-shriveled apple on a lower limb, and pecked at the stem until it came free and fell onto the half frozen grass. I practiced with the apple for a few moments until I could hold it firmly without sinking my talons into its flesh. Then I went back to the squealing field-mouse. I took him firmly in my talons, shouldered the rock off his tail, and left for Vo Astur.
The trip wasn’t bad – for me – and after we were several hundred feet up in the air, Killane stopped squealing. He did tremble a lot, though.
It was mid-afternoon when we reached Vo Astur, and I noted as we settled onto the battlements of the palace that the parapet was largely deserted, a clear indication that discipline was lax. I disapproved of that, even though it was definitely to our advantage. Asturia was on a war footing, after all, and the lack of sentries on the parapet was an indication of unforgivable slovenliness. Still holding the trembling mouse in one claw, I hopped into a deserted sentry-box at the southwest corner of the battlements and changed Killane and myself back into our natural forms. He was staring at me in absolute horror when his real form blurred into place, and he continued that squeaking.
‘Stop that!’ I told him sharply. ‘You’re a man again. Talk. Don’t squeak.’
‘Don’t you ever do that t’ me again!’ he gasped.
‘It was your idea, Killane.’
‘I never said no such thing.’
‘You told me that you were going to come along. All right, you did come along. Now quit complaining.’
‘What a dreadful thing that wast’ do!’
‘So was threatening to burn my house down. Snap out of it, Killane. We’ve got work to do.’
We kept watch from the tiny sentry-box until the soldiers who were scattered along the parapet gathered over on the far side in response to the inviting sound of a pair of rattling dice. Then, with no ostentatious display of furtiveness, Killane and I went down a flight of stairs into the upper floors of Nerasin’s palace. I still knew my way around the ducal residence, and Killane and I slipped unobtrusively into a dusty, neglected library. In all probability, it was the safest place to hide, since study was not held in very high regard in Vo Astur just then.
The sun went down and darkness settled over Vo Astur. The noise from the throne-room seemed to suggest that the Asturians were celebrating something. Nerasin had evidently done some boasting, and his cohorts – his immediate family, for the most part – appeared to be convinced that his clever ploy would improve things in Vo Astur. I assumed that they were eating as well as drinking. That’s the basic flaw in any attempt to starve a people into submission. The ones you’re really after are the last ones to go hungry.
Killane kept watch at the door while I carefully reviewed the details of a dissection my teacher Balten and I had performed back on the Isle of the Winds. I wanted to make absolutely certain that a fairly common ailment would convince Nerasin to be cooperative.
I think it was almost midnight when a group of rowdy Asturian nobles came staggering up the stairs from the throne-room, turned the semi-comatose Nerasin over to the guards at the door to the royal apartment, and reeled off down the corridor singing a bawdy drinking song.
Killane and I waited. ‘I’ll be after doin’ th’ killin’, Lady-O,’ my friend whispered to me. ‘I’d not be wantin’ y’ t’ soil yer pretty hands on th’ likes o’ no Asturian.’
‘We aren’t going to kill anybody, Killane,’ I told him firmly. ‘I’m going to give Nerasin some instructions, that’s all.’
‘Surely y’ don’t think he’ll be after followin’ them, do y’?’
‘He’ll follow them, Killane. Believe me, he’ll follow them.’
‘I’ll be absolutely fascinated t’ see how y’ plan t’ manage that, Lady-O.’ He picked up a heavy chair and very slowly twisted it apart, making only a very small amount of noise. When it was all in pieces, he selected one of the legs and swished it through the air a couple of times. ‘Twill do nicely, don’t y’ k
now,’ he noted, brandishing his makeshift club.
‘What did you do that for?’ I asked him.
‘I’ll be after needin’ something’ t’ put th’ guards t’ sleep.’
‘Why don’t you check with me before you dismantle any more furniture?’ I suggested. ‘The guards won’t be any problem.’
‘I’ll not be after doubtin’ yer unspeakable gifts, Lady-O,’ he said, ‘but I think I’ll be after keepin’ me cudgel here – just in case.’
‘Whatever makes you comfortable, I suppose.’ I listened at the door for a few moments. Silence was settling over the castle. Here and there a door slammed, and the occasional bursts of laughter and rowdy song were quite some distance off. I opened the door slightly and looked at the two bored-looking guards at Nerasin’s door. ‘Sleep,’ I murmured to them under my breath, and a moment or so later they were sprawled, snoring, one on either side of the door. ‘Let’s get on with this, then,’ I said to Killane, and the two of us stepped out into the corridor.
The door was not locked, since it was supposed to be guarded, so Killane and I were inside Nerasin’s apartment in no more than a minute.
I cast my thought about the series of connected rooms and found that nobody was awake, and then my friend and I went on into the bedroom where Nerasin sprawled snoring and only partially undressed across the canopied bed. I noticed that his bare feet were very dirty.
Killane quietly closed the door. ‘Would y’ be after wantin’ me t’ wake him?’ he whispered.
‘Not yet,’ I murmured. ‘I’d better sober him up first. Then he’ll wake up all by himself, I think.’ I rather carefully examined the man who called himself ‘the Duke of Astur’. He was of a medium build, he had a big, bulbous nose and small, deep-set eyes. He had a weak chin and sparse, dark hair. He was none too clean, and his breath was like the odor from a freshly reopened grave.
Leeching the residue of strong drink from a man’s body isn’t particularly difficult, but I wanted something in place within Nerasin’s body before I did that. I probed rather carefully with my thought, located his stomach, and carefully etched away the lining of the stomach wall near its bottom. Then I abraded the stomach wall itself until there was an open sore there. Nerasin’s digestive juices should do the rest. Then, being careful not to move too quickly, I drained away what he’d drunk that evening. When I judged that he was just on the verge of noticing the fire I’d just built in his belly, I relaxed the muscles in his voice-box to the point that he wouldn’t be able to scream – not audibly, at any rate.
Polgara the Sorceress Page 36