Things settled down after a week or so, and father and I concluded that the siege of the Stronghold would probably continue for a number of years and that our continued presence wouldn’t really serve any purpose. We had things to do elsewhere, so we decided to go back to the Isle of the Winds. Before we left, though, I had one more talk with Gelane.
This is very exciting, Aunt Pol,’ the little boy said.
The excitement wears a little thin after a while, Gelane.’
‘How long do these siege things usually last?’
‘Several years, usually.’
‘That long? Don’t the people outside get tired of it? Can’t they see that they’re not going to get inside?’
‘They’re soldiers, Gelane. Sometimes it takes soldiers a little longer to think their way through things than it does ordinary people.’
‘You don’t like soldiers, do you. Aunt Pol?’
‘They’re all right – as individuals. It’s when you lump them together into an army that their brains desert them. I want you to be very careful here, Gelane. Stay out of sight, and don’t stand in front of any open windows. One of the reasons Torak has for being here is that he wants to kill you.’
‘Me? Why me? What’d I ever do to him?’
‘It’s not anything you’ve done, Gelane; it’s what you might do sometime in the future.’
‘Oh?’
‘You – or your son, or your son’s son, or somebody on down the line of sons that’ll descend from you – is going to kill Torak. If he kills you now, he won’t have to worry about that.’
His eyes grew very bright at that. ‘Maybe I’d better get a sword and start practicing,’ he said enthusiastically.
‘Oh, dear,’ I said, realizing my mistake when it was too late. You don’t ever want to suggest heroism to a little boy. He shouldn’t even know what the word means until he’s at least twenty. ‘Gelane,’ I said patiently, ‘you’re only six years old. Right now, you couldn’t even lift a sword, much less swing one. Here’s what you should do. There’s a pile of rocks in the southeast corner of the maze in the middle of the Stronghold.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen them.’
‘The best thing for you to do is to pick up one of those rocks and carry it up the stairs to the top of the Stronghold. Then you take it over to the battlements and drop it on the Angaraks outside the walls.’
‘I’ll bet they wouldn’t like that at all, would they?’
‘Not very much, no.’
‘What do I do then, Aunt Pol?’
‘Go get another rock.’
‘Those rocks look awfully heavy.’
‘Yes, they do, don’t they? That’s the idea, though, Gelane. Picking up heavy things is a good way to make your muscles bigger, and you’re going to have to be very strong if you’re going to get into a sword-fight with Torak.’
‘How long will it take – to get big muscles, I mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know – six or eight years, maybe. Possibly ten.’
‘Maybe I’ll learn how to shoot a bow and arrow instead.’
‘That might be more interesting. Look after your mother, Gelane. I’ll come by from time to time to see how you’re coming along with your archery.’
‘I’ll practice a lot, Aunt Pol,’ he promised.
I hope you took notes there. The secret word in dealing with little boys is ‘diversion’. Don’t forbid things. Make them sound unpleasant instead. Boyish enthusiasm diminishes in direct proportion to the amount of sweat involved.
Trust me. I’ve been doing this for a long time.
Father and I left the Stronghold at first light the next morning and flew west to Camaar. We spent the night in our usual inn and flew on to Riva to gather up the Alorn kings. Then we sailed south in a small fleet of Cherek war-boats.
Ran Borune himself met us on the wharves, and that was most unusual. The politics of the situation here were very murky, though, so Ran Borune went out of his way to avoid offending the sometimes prickly Alorn kings. I liked Ran Borune. He was a small man, like all members of the Borune family. Father’s introduction of the Dryad strain into the Borune line had done some rather peculiar things. A pure Dryad for example, would never give birth to a male child, but their tiny size carried over into the men of the family, and you’ll seldom see a male Borune who tops five feet.
To avoid offending Tolnedran sensibilities, father and I had hinted around the edges of an outright lie, leading our southern allies to believe that the names ‘Belgarath’ and ‘Polgara’ were in the nature of hereditary titles passed down through generations in order to impress gullible Alorn monarchs. I’m told that a whole sub-division of the history department at the University of Tol Honeth has devoted years to the study of us, and they’ve even gone so far as to devise a genealogy of this mysterious family that wields so much power in the kingdoms of the north. The Duchess of Erat, for example, was ‘Polgara VII’, and during the Angarak invasion, I was ‘Polgara LXXXIII’.
I’m not certain if that sub-department’s still functioning, but if they are I’m probably currently referred to as ‘Polgara CXVII’.
Isn’t that impressive?
The emperor was accompanied by his Chief of Staff, General Cerran. Cerran was an Anadile, a member of a southern Tolnedran family that’s always been closely allied with the Borunes. We were lucky to have Cerran, since the man was a tactical genius. He was a blocky, no-nonsense sort of fellow with heavy shoulders and no sign of the paunch that almost all men develop in their fifties.
The Alorn kings had arrived in Tol Honeth some weeks ago, and they joined us and we all trooped up the hill to the imperial compound, and Ran Borune advised us that the Imperial War College was at our disposal for our strategy sessions. It was a pleasant building, but its most significant feature was the fact that all the maps were there. A nation that’s spent well over a thousand years building roads is going to have a lot of maps, and I’d imagine that if someone were really curious, he could find a map somewhere in the War College that’d show the precise location of his own house.
Although we worked at the Imperial War College, we lived in the various Alorn embassies. It’s not that we wanted to keep secrets, it was just that guests in the imperial palace seem to attract followers. I won’t use the word ‘spies’, but I think you get my point.
Father’s ploy of hinting that the Drasnian Intelligence Service, even as dislocated as it had been by the Angarak invasion, was providing the information we were actually getting from other sources gave the Tolnedrans a graceful way to avoid accepting things they weren’t prepared to look straight in the face. A Tolnedran will go to absurd lengths to maintain his staunch belief that there’s no such thing as magic. It’s a little awkward sometimes, but we’ve always managed to work our way around it. Deep down, we all know that it’s pure subterfuge, but as long as we all behave as if we believe it, relations with the Tolnedrans can go smoothly.
Thus, when uncle Beldin arrived in Tol Honeth to report what he’d seen in southern Cthol Murgos, we passed him off as a Drasnian spy. Beldin’s had a lot of experience at spying anyway, so he was able to pull it off rather well. General Cerran found uncle’s report of the friction between Ctuchik and Urvon particularly interesting. ‘Evidently, Angarak society’s not as monolithic as it seems,’ he mused.
‘Monolithic?’ Beldin snorted. ‘Far from it, general. If Torak didn’t have his fist wrapped firmly around the heart of every one of his worshipers, they’d all be gleefully butchering each other – which is more or less what’s happening in southern Cthol Murgos right now.’
‘Maybe if we’re lucky, both sides will win,’ Cho-Ram suggested.
‘In the light of this Murgo distaste for Malloreans, how long would you say that it’s going to take Urvon to march his army across southern Cthol Murgos, Master Beldin?’ Cerran asked.
‘Half a year at least,’ Beldin said with a shrug. ‘I think we can count on the Murgos to make the march interesting.’
‘That answers one question anyway.’
‘I didn’t follow that, general.’
‘Your friend here – and his lovely daughter of course – have told us that this fellow who calls himself “Kal Torak” feels a powerful religious obligation to be in Arendia on a certain specific date.’
‘It’s a little more complicated than that, but let that slide – unless you’d like to hear an extended theological dissertation on the peculiarities of the Angarak religion.’
‘Ah – no thanks, Master Beldin,’ Cerran replied with a faint smile. ‘We don’t know exactly what that date is, but we can make a pretty good guess.’
‘Oh?’
‘Kal Torak’s going to want Urvon in place near the southern border of Nyissa when that date gets closer. He’ll want to give himself plenty of time because a two-pronged attack doesn’t work very well if one of the prongs isn’t in place yet. That means that Urvon’s going to have to get an early start. Let’s ignore that, though, and use your six-month figure. The battle’s going to begin when Urvon marches out of Rak Hagga. We’ll want to start moving into place then. We’ll get confirmation when Torak abandons the siege of the Stronghold to come west. That’ll be forty-five days before the fighting starts. As you suggested, there are bound to be delays, but let’s use Kal Torak’s calendar just to be on the safe side. We’ll move when Urvon moves. We might get there early, but it’s better to be early than late.’
‘Tis a wonderful clever fellow th’ man is, don’t y’ know,’ Beldin said to my father.
‘Will you stop that?’ father said irritably. Then he dipped his head slightly to General Cerran. ‘You’re a very useful man to have around, General. Most of my military experience has been with Alorns, and they tend to make things up as they go along. Careful planning seems to bore them for some reason.’
‘Belgarath!’ the grey-bearded King Eldrig objected.
‘It’s just a difference in approach, your Majesty,’ General Cerran smoothed things over. ‘Experience has taught me that things go wrong during military operations, and I try to take those things into account. My estimates are very conservative, but even if Urvon and Kal Torak don’t exactly follow my timetable, we’ll still have our defenses in place in plenty of time. I hate being late for social engagements, don’t you?’
‘You look upon war as a social engagement, General?’ father asked, sounding a bit startled.
‘I’m a soldier, Belgarath. A good war’s the closest thing a soldier has to a social life.’
‘He’s going to take some getting used to, isn’t he?’ Beldin chuckled. ‘He’s got a good mind, though.’
‘You’re too kind, Master Beldin,’ the general murmured.
Our strategy sessions progressed in a much more orderly fashion than they had at Riva. Cerran was a methodical man who ticked off such things as ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘how’ on his fingers. We’d already decided that ‘when’ would be determined by some fairly visible activity on the part of the two Angarak forces. Then we moved on to ‘where’. The Mrin told us that the final battle would take place in Arendia, and our convenient fiction that our knowledge of that had come from Drasnian Intelligence had been accepted by the Tolnedrans as a verified fact. Arendia’s a big place, though, and it wasn’t until the sixth year of the siege of the Stronghold that the twins wrested the exact location out of the Mrin. After that, we knew that the battle would take place at Vo Mimbre. All we had to do then was convince the Tolnedrans that we knew what we were talking about.
After one of our sessions, I motioned to Brand, and the two of us took a stroll around the rain-drenched grounds of the imperial compound.
‘You wanted to speak with me, Pol?’ Brand asked me.
‘We’re going to have to lead General Cerran rather gently, Brand,’ I replied. ‘I think you’re best qualified to do that. Cerran knows that the Alorn kings all defer to you, even though he doesn’t know exactly why.’
‘My overpowering presence, perhaps?’ he suggested.
“The outcome of a dice-game might be more in keeping with the basic Alorn character, Brand,’ I twitted him.
‘Polgara!’ he protested mildly.
‘Whatever the reason, Cerran looks upon you as the leader of the Aloms, so he’s going to listen to you rather carefully. Cerran likes to reason things out, so we’re going to have to stress the disadvantages of all other possible battlefields and then let him decide that Vo Mimbre’s the only possible place. If we don’t, he’ll feel obliged to have us spread our forces all over southern Arendia.’
‘That’d be disastrous,’ Brand exclaimed.
‘Moderately disastrous, yes. Now, then, I spent a great deal of time in Arendia during the third millennium, so I’m familiar with all the cities. You’re about to get an education in geography, dear boy. I want you to be very familiar with the terrain around every city in Mimbre. There are tactical disadvantages to almost any city on earth, and Mimbrate cities are no exception. Your job’s to stress the disadvantages of every town and city – except Vo Mimbre. It has its own disadvantages, but we’ll gloss over those. We don’t want General Cerran to choose any battleground except Vo Mimbre, so we’ll just close all the other doors to him so that he’s only got that one choice.’
‘You’re very good at this, Pol,’ he said admiringly.
‘I’ve had lots of practice. Wars are the national pastime among the Arends. A healthy sneeze can start a war in Arendia. I spent six hundred or more years trying to keep the Arends from sneezing at the wrong time. I’ll talk with Eldrig and the others, and they’ll back you up in your assessments of the various towns and cities.’
This would all be a lot easier if the Tolnedrans would just accept the fact that you and your father aren’t like other people.’
‘That goes against their religion, dear one,’ I said with a slight smile.
‘What is the basis of the Tolnedran religion, Pol?’
‘Money. The Tolnedrans invented it, so they think it’s holy. They’re afraid of magic because a magician could conceivably create money instead of swindling it out of others.’
‘Could you create money, Pol?’ His eyes had come alight at the mere mention of the idea.
I shrugged. ‘Probably, but why should I bother? I’ve already got more than I can spend. We’re getting off the path here. This Tolnedran superstition’s inconvenient, I’ll grant you, but we can work our way around it.’
After General Cerran had reached the conclusion we wanted him to reach, my father’s disposition started to go sour for some reason. I put up with his bad temper for about a week, and then I went to his room in the Cherek embassy to find out what his problem was.
‘This is the problem, Pol!’ he exploded, banging his fist down on the scroll of the Mrin. ‘It doesn’t make sense!’
‘It’s not supposed to, father. It’s supposed to sound like pure gibberish. Tell me about your problem. Maybe I can help.’
Father’s discontent with the passage in the Mrin lay in the seeming suggestion that Brand was going to be in two places at the same time. His tone was decidedly grouchy as he read it to me.’ “And the Child of Light shall take the jewel from its accustomed place and shall cause it to be delivered up to the Child of Light before the gates of the golden city.”‘ His frustration seemed right on the verge of driving him to destroy the scroll.
‘Calm down, father,’ I told him. ‘Apoplexy’s not going to solve anything.’ I saw the answer immediately, of course, but how was I going to explain it? ‘How long would you say that one of these EVENTS takes to run its course?’ I asked.
‘As long as it takes, I suppose.’
‘Centuries? Oh, come now, father. As powerful as those two contending Necessities are, a confrontation like that would destroy the whole universe. A single instant’s probably closer to the truth. Then, after the EVENT’S taken place, that particular Child of Light doesn’t really have any further need of the title, does he? He’s done what he’s supposed to do, and th
e title can be passed on. One Child of Light will take the sword down off the wall, another will carry it here from Riva, and it’ll be handed over to Brand. They’ll be passing the title along at the same time they pass the sword.’
‘I think you’re straining to make it all fit, Pol,’ he said.
‘Can you come up with anything else?’
‘Not really. I guess I’d better go to the Isle.’
‘Oh? What for?’
‘To get the sword, of course. Brand’s going to need it.’ He’d obviously leapt to a conclusion that seemed to me to have several large holes in it. He seemed to believe that he was going to be the Child of Light who’d take the sword down off the wall in the Hall of the Rivan King. By the time he got to Riva, though, mother’d already taken care of that, and the sword played no part in it. All glowing with blue light, she’d entered the Hall, removed the Orb from the pommel of Iron-grip’s sword, and embedded it in the center of a shield. I rather suspect that took some of the wind out of father’s sails. I also suspect that he began to understand – dimly – that mother wasn’t quite as dead as he’d believed. He seemed a bit crestfallen when he returned to Tol Honeth.
It was in the spring of 4874 that uncle Beldin returned again from southern Cthol Murgos to report that Urvon had left Rak Hagga to begin his trek across the continent. If General Cerran’s timetable was correct, we had less than a year to complete our preparations. One of those was already in progress. Brand reported to father that he was ‘hearing voices’. This isn’t the sort of thing a physician really wants to hear. When someone announces that he ‘hears voices’, the physician normally reserves a room for the poor fellow in the nearest asylum, since it’s a clear indication that the patient’s brains have sprung a leak.
Polgara the Sorceress Page 65