Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  Brand appeared to be a repetition of Kamion – and also, in a peculiar sort of way, of Ontrose. I found that to be reassuring, since of all the men I’d known until then, either of those two was the most qualified to meet Torak in single combat.

  Eldrig of Cherek and Rhodar of Drasnia hadn’t yet arrived at Riva, so father, Brand, Cho-Ram and I spent many hours conferring in that blue-draped council chamber high in one of the towers of the citadel. Brand was so startled that his urbane manner slipped just a bit when I told him that he was the one who was going to face Torak in Arendia.

  ‘Me?’ he said in a choked voice.

  Then father recited the passage from the Mrin,’ “And let him who stands in the stead of the Guardian meet the Child of Dark in the domain of the Bull-God.”‘ Father gave him one of those infuriating little smirks he’s so fond of. ‘You’re standing in for the Rivan King at the moment, Brand,’ he said, ‘so I guess that means that you’ve been elected.’

  ‘I didn’t even know I was a candidate. What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘We’re not sure. You will be when the time comes, though. When you come face to face with One-eye, the Necessity’s going to take over. It always does in these situations.’

  ‘I’d be a lot more comfortable if I knew what was supposed to happen.’

  ‘We all would, but it doesn’t work that way. Don’t worry, Brand. You’ll do just fine.’

  After Eldrig and Rhodar joined us, we got down to the business of mapping out our strategy, and after a few meetings, King Ormik of Sendaria joined us. Father uses the word ‘strategy’ as if it actually meant something, but the Alorns each knew what their traditional roles would be. The Chereks would be our navy, the Drasnians would be our infantry, and the Algars would be our cavalry. They already knew what to do, so all the bleak faces and ponderous talk were little more than a way to show off and to build morale.

  After those grown-up children who ruled the northern part of the continent finished playing, the conference concluded, and I returned to the Stronghold. I lived quietly there despite the turmoil swirling around in the world. Turmoil or not, I still had my task. Garel was twenty-one years old when he married an Algar girl, Aravina, in the year 4860, and in 4861, I delivered Aravina of a son, Gelane.

  As I almost always did after the delivery of one of the heirs, I held Gelane for a little while after he was born. Aravina might have been his mother, but my face was the first one he saw. It has something to do with our peculiar background, I think. Wolf-puppies are not exactly like ducklings, who automatically believe that the first moving thing they see is their mother, but there are some similarities. It might not really make any difference, but I always try to form that initial attachment – just to be on the safe side.

  Chapter 30

  It wasn’t long after Gelane was born that father came by the Stronghold with uncle Beldin, who’d made one of his periodic trips back from Mallorea to fill us in on what was happening on the other side of the Sea of the East. They visited briefly with Cho-Ram and with Garel, Aravina and the baby, and then the three of us adjourned to one of the squat, round towers atop the battlements of the Algars’ overgrown Murgo-trap.

  My uncle looked almost absently out of one of the narrow, slitted windows with the wind ruffling his hair. ‘Nice view,’ he noted, staring out at the endless ocean of grass lying far below.

  ‘We aren’t here for sightseeing, Beldin,’ father said. ‘Why don’t you tell Pol what’s going on in Mallorea?’

  Uncle sprawled in a chair at the roughly made table of the guard-tower. ‘Why don’t we go back a bit?’ he suggested. ‘Burnt-face has changed a lot, but he’s still not equipped to deal with a secular society. Back before the cracking of the world, he made all of the decisions for the Angaraks. A good Angarak wouldn’t even scratch his own backside without permission from Torak. Then, after he’d cracked the world apart and the Master’s Orb had dissolved half his face, Torak took all the old-style Angaraks to Cthol Mishrak and left the generals at Mal Zeth and the Grolims at Mal Yaska to run the rest of Angarak society. Over the centuries, the generals in particular grew more and more secular. Then the Melcenes and their bureaucrats joined the Angarak empire, and they buffed the raw edges off the basic barbarism of the Angarak character. Mal Zeth became a civilized city. It wasn’t Tol Honeth by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t Korim either.’

  ‘Was Korim really all that bad?’ I asked him.

  ‘Probably worse, Pol,’ he replied. ‘Independent thought was strictly prohibited. Torak did all the thinking, and the Grolims gutted anybody who even suggested that the sun might come up tomorrow morning. Anyway, Zedar had been with Torak at Ashaba for all those centuries while old One-eye was busy having religious experiences.’ Uncle paused. ‘I just had an interesting thought,’ he mused. ‘When the spirit of prophecy hits someone, it seems to erase his brain. Torak was probably on about the same mental level as that idiot on the banks of the Mrin for all those years.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ father demanded.

  Beldin shrugged and scratched at his stomach. ‘I just thought it was interesting. Anyway, One-eye finally snapped out of his brainless reverie and came out of Ashaba, darkening the sun in the process, and he had no idea of what’d happened to his Angaraks. He’d been isolated in his iron tower at Cthol Mishrak and even more isolated at Ashaba. He’d been completely out of touch for forty-eight centuries or so. He stopped by Mal Yaska on his way to the capital, and that gave Urvon the opportunity to present him with a long list of grievances. Right at the top of the list was the fact that the generals at Mal Zeth were ignoring him, and Urvon can’t bear being ignored. He advised his Master that the generals were all unredeemed heretics. Since Urvon got to him first and talked very fast, Torak left Mal Yaska absolutely convinced that Mal Zeth was a hotbed of secular heresy, so he virtually depopulated the city when he got there. Then he turned Urvon and his Grolims loose on the rest of the continent, and the priesthood started settling old scores with their gutting knives. The altars of Torak ran red for years.’

  I shuddered.

  ‘It was probably Zedar who finally convinced Torak that butchering your own army isn’t the best way to prepare for a foreign war, so Burnt-face finally reined Urvon in. By then the Angaraks, Melcenes, and Karands were all so terrified of the Grolims that they’d march into fire if Urvon ordered them to. It was probably the most amazing regression in history. A whole civilization collapsed back into the stone age in about ten years. Right now the average Mallorean’s on a par with the Thulls. Urvon’s even gone so far as to make reading a crime – except for his Grolims, of course – but even the Grolim libraries have been purged of all secular books. I’m waiting for him to outlaw the wheel.’

  Father’s expression grew horrified. ‘They’ve been burning books?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Don’t tie your guts in a knot, Belgarath,’ uncle told him. ‘The scholars at the university of Melcene carted off all their libraries and hid them in places where the Grolims can’t find them, and if nothing else, the Dals at Kell have probably got copies of every book that’s ever been written, and the Grolims won’t go anywhere near Kell.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I would either,’ father admitted. “The Dals are a very unusual people.’

  ‘ “Unusual” only begins to cover it,’ Beldin agreed. ‘Anyway, the army that’s going to come out of Mallorea is going to have numbers and not much else. Their brains have been erased.’

  ‘Those are the best kind of enemies,’ father almost gloated. ‘Give me a stupid enemy every time.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that.’ Then uncle looked around. ‘Is there anything to drink up here?’

  ‘Maybe you can have something with supper,’ I told him.

  ‘Why not before supper?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to spoil your appetite, uncle dear.’

  Since the entire purpose of the impending Angarak invasion was to regain the Orb, the Al
orns were certain to bear the brunt of that assault, and father and I had provided them with far more information than we’d given the non-Alorn rulers. When the Murgos and Nadraks closed the caravan routes in the autumn of 4864, however, the Tolnedrans in particular began to get wind of the fact that something significant was afoot. To make matters even worse for the merchant princes of Tol Honeth, Brand closed the port of Riva that winter – ostensibly for renovations. At that point even a simpleton would have realized that the Alorns and Angaraks were clearing things away in preparation for something fairly earth-shaking, and Ran Borune IV was far from being a simpleton.

  We all met again at Riva that winter to review our preparations, and I suggested to father that courtesy, if nothing else, demanded that we advise Ran Borune of the impending invasion. ‘If this is all going to come to a climax in Arendia, father,’ I said, ‘we’re probably going to need the Tolnedran legions, so let’s stay on the good side of the emperor.’

  Father grunted – he does that a lot – but he went on down to Tol Honeth to speak with the youthful Ran Borune. While they were talking, my sometimes bumbling father had a stroke of pure genius. Rather than waste time and effort hammering at the unassailable wall of Ran Borune’s scepticism about just how we were getting all this information, father blandly lied to him, handing all the credit to the Drasnian intelligence service. That’s been a very useful myth over the centuries.

  It was still too early for the Tolnedrans – or anybody else, for that matter – to do anything definitive about the activities of the Angaraks, but at least father’s warning gave Ran Borune time to start getting his legions into better physical condition. Once peace breaks out, professional soldiers tend to become flabby in a very short period of time. Regular exercise is time-consuming, and the soldiers are preoccupied with more important things – such as drinking, carousing, and chasing women who don’t really mind getting caught.

  Then in the early spring of the year 4865 – so early in fact that the ice hadn’t yet broken up – the Malloreans began their westward trek across that string of rocky islets between Mallorea and the western continent. Some idiot who’d never actually seen those islands had designated them as ‘the land bridge’. If I couldn’t build a better bridge than that, I’d take up gardening instead.

  I think we’ve all berated ourselves about our failure to reason out what Torak would do when his army reached the barren land of the Morindim lying to the north of Gar og Nadrak. The Mrin assured us that Torak had an appointment in Arendia, so we all assumed that he’d march down the Nadrak coast to Mishrak ac Thull and then turn west and cross Algaria to reach the lands of the Arends.

  Torak himself was far too arrogant for subterfuge, so it was probably Zedar who sent several regiments of redtuniced Malloreans to Thull Zelik with orders to wander about the streets to deceive the ever-present Drasnian spies. The presence of those Malloreans in Mishrak ac Thull reinforced our conviction that Torak would march directly to the Eastern Escarpment to invade Algaria.

  But he didn’t. He went through the forests of Gar og Nadrak instead and invaded Drasnia. To say that we were unprepared for that would be the grossest of understatements. We’d assembled a huge Alorn army on the eastern plains of Algaria to meet the expected invasion, so we’d stripped Drasnia of most of its defenders. We were badly out of position when Torak’s army of Malloreans, Nadraks, Murgos, and Thulls swept out of the Nadrak forest on to the moors of eastern Drasnia. Torak immediately sent about half his army to Drasnia’s southern frontier, effectively cutting off our efforts to rush north to defend our Drasnian friends, and then the Dragon-God’s forces began to methodically slaughter every Drasnian they could lay their hands on.

  The carnage was dreadful. Such Drasnians as were not killed on sight were turned over to the Grolims for the gruesome sacrificial rites so dear to the heart of their insane God.

  By midsummer in the year 4866, Drasnia had been largely depopulated – except for the few refugees hiding out in the fens. One escape column trekked north into Morindland and eventually reached Cherek. Thousands of Drasnian refugees were taken by ship from Kotu to other lands lying to the north and west, and the crack regiments of the Drasnian army who’d been assigned the impossible task of defending their homeland were literally driven on to Cherek vessels and freighted to the mouth of the Aldur River and forced to march south to the Stronghold. King Rhodar had desperately wanted to mount a defense of Boktor, but father had dragged him to Kotu and forced him to board King Eldrig’s war-boat. I don’t think Rhodar ever trusted my father after that.

  Once he had absolute control of Drasnia, Torak paused to regroup and to give the reinforcements still streaming across the land bridge time to catch up to him.

  Let’s clarify something here. Torak himself is no military genius. Back during the War of the Gods when he was actually making the decisions, he made so many mistakes that it’s a wonder that his Angaraks didn’t become extinct. The Dragon-God has an almost Arendish fondness for the mass frontal assault and the last stand. The overall Angarak strategy in the forty-ninth century came from Zedar, not Torak. Uncle Beldin has deduced – correctly, I believe – that when Torak sent Urvon to Mal Yaska and Ctuchik to Rak Cthol, he sent Zedar to Mal Zeth to work behind the scenes. Zedar was probably the shrewdest of Torak’s disciples, and the generals at Mal Zeth gave him an excellent education in tactics and strategy. Torak’s heavy-handedness was still much in evidence, but most of the subtlety of the Angarak invasion of the west can be attributed to my father’s apostate brother.

  After Drasnia had been crushed, the Alorn Council, joined by King Ormik of Sendaria, met at Riva for an emergency session. Before our meetings began, however, I went through the bleak hallways of the Citadel to have a word with the Rivan Warder. There were several things I wanted him to understand.

  Most kings select towers for their place of study, probably because ‘eminence’ suggests elevation. Brand – all of the Brands – have been modest, self-effacing men who know that they’re caretakers more than rulers. Brand’s study was buried deep inside the Citadel, and there were several meeting-rooms nearby where he could conduct the actual day-to-day business of running the Isle. At least that way he didn’t have to climb several flights of stairs to get to his desk.

  ‘A word with you, Lord Brand?’ I asked him, pausing in the doorway of his slightly cluttered, candle-lit workroom.

  ‘Of course, Lady Polgara,’ he replied, rising to his feet. He was very tall, and his shoulders were huge. He held a chair for me, and I sat down. Then he resumed his own seat. ‘What can I do for you, my Lady?’

  ‘You can start by dropping all the formality, Brand,’ I replied. ‘We’re too busy for that.’

  He smiled. ‘Bad habits are hard to break, Pol,’ he apologized.

  ‘I’ve noticed. You’re a very polite and civilized man, Brand, so all your instincts are going to command you to defer to Eldrig. He’s older, and he’s the king of the original Alorn nation. I know that it’s always been the custom to let the King of Cherek take the lead in the meetings of the Alorn Council, but this time we’re going to set that custom aside. In this particular situation, you outrank the King of Cherek.’

  ‘I don’t wear a crown, Pol,’ he pointed out. ‘Rhodar outranks me, and he doesn’t even have a kingdom anymore.’

  ‘You’re going to be the Child of Light, Brand. That means that you outrank everybody. I’m not talking about bowing and sitting down first or any of that other nonsense. I’m talking about command. I know that you’re diplomatic enough not to offend Eldrig, but let’s get your position established right at the outset. The time’s going to come when you’ll be getting instructions from something far more significant than any earthly king. You’re going to be the instrument of the Purpose of the Universe. You’ll be issuing some orders that’ll come from the Purpose, and we don’t want Eldrig to start countermanding your orders. Let’s get him into the habit of obedience right at the outset. I’ve been involved in en
ough wars to know that command has to come from one source. You can’t run a military operation with a committee.’

  ‘Just exactly what’s involved in this “Child of Light” business? I’m not too well-versed in theology.’

  ‘The Universe came into being with a Purpose, Brand.’

  ‘Yes, I understand that part. The Gods created it.’

  ‘No. You’ve got that part backwards. The Universe came first, and then the Gods.’

  ‘The priests of Belar don’t agree with that.’

  ‘Naturally not. UL might have come into existence at the same time as the Universe, but nothing pre-dated it.’ I paused. ‘That’s a personal belief of mine, Brand, so it’s open to argument. It’s beside the point, though.’

  ‘Who’s UL?’

  The God of the Ulgos. He’s the father of the other Gods.’

  Brand’s eyes grew wide, and he swallowed hard.

  ‘We’re getting away from the subject here. The Universe came into being with a Purpose. Then there was a cosmic accident – a star exploded in a place where it wasn’t supposed to – and the Purpose was divided. Those two Purposes have been fighting with each other ever since. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but you get the point, I’m sure.’

  ‘I’ve seen lots of family squabbles, Pol.’

  ‘I guess it is sort of like a family squabble at that. Anyway, these two Purposes can’t meet directly. The whole Universe would explode if they did, so they have to work through surrogates.’