Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  As smoky evening settled over Vo Mimbre, mother and I merged again and flew on silent wings over the wreckage of Angarak to the place where Torak’s rusty palace stood.

  ‘Methinks I have erred, Zedar,’ Torak was saying ominously when we wriggled through our favorite little window. ‘An Angarak disciple would not have failed me so miserably this day. Should I summon Ctuchik or Urvon to replace thee?’

  Zedar choked a bit on that. ‘Prithee, Master,’ he begged. ‘Permit me to redeem myself in thine eyes. I do now perceive mine error. Mine engines were not equal to the task I set them. I shall begin anew, and by first light shall engines invincible be at mine immediate disposal. Vo Mimbre is doomed, Master.’

  ‘Or thou art, Zedar,’ Torak replied in that dreadful, echoing voice of his. ‘Do that which is necessary to place me inside those golden walls by nightfall.’

  ‘Were it not for the restrictions which have been lain upon us, might I easily accomplish that task, Lord.’

  “The restrictions have been lain upon me, Zedar. They need not be of concern to thee.’

  Zedar’s eyes brightened. ‘Then I may proceed without fear of the chastisement of Necessity?’

  “Thou art commanded to proceed, Zedar. Should that result in thy chastisement, it is no concern of mine. Take comfort in the fact that I shall always remember thee fondly when thou art gone, however. But this is war, Zedar, and wars do frequently carry off friends. It is regrettable, but the attainment of a goal doth always take precedence. Should it come to pass that thou must lay down thy life so that I may achieve mine ends, so be it.’

  The casual indifference of the Dragon-God chilled Zedar’s blood, I’m sure, and it quite probably rearranged his thinking about just how important he was in Torak’s view of the world.

  Mother and I returned to the city, and once again she told me to ‘go out and play’ while she continued her surveillance of our enemies. She wasn’t quite as cold-blooded about it as Torak had been, but still –

  Then, even as I was going down the stairs to the throne-room, I realized that the battle had erased – or pushed into the background – Torak’s unwholesome lust for me. I was terribly disappointed in him. A genuine suitor would never have let anything as petty as the fate of the world distract him from what was supposed to occupy his every waking thought. I sadly concluded that he probably didn’t really love me as much as he’d claimed. Sometimes a girl just can’t depend on anybody to do what’s right.

  Everyone was in the throne-room when I entered.

  ‘What are they up to, Pol?’ father asked. Father’s protests when I’d told him that I was ‘going out to have a look’ had been vehement, but his objections hadn’t been quite strong enough to prevent him from using every scrap of information I’d managed to pick up. I’ve noticed over the years that men frequently take strong positions that are mostly for show. Then, having established their towering nobility, they come back down to earth and take advantage of whatever turns up.

  ‘Zedar seems to have fallen out of favor,’ I answered my father’s question. ‘He was supposed to take Vo Mimbre yesterday, and Torak was seriously put out with him for his failure.’

  ‘Torak’s never been noted for his forgiving nature,’ Beltira said.

  “The years haven’t mellowed him very much, uncle.’

  ‘Were you able to pick up any hints about what we should expect tomorrow, Pol?’ father pressed.

  ‘Nothing very specific, Father. Torak himself is going to abide by the restrictions the Necessities have placed on him, but he as much as ordered Zedar to ignore them. He did say that he’d be just broken-hearted if the Necessities should obliterate Zedar for breaking the rules, but if that’s the way it turns out – ah, well. Zedar seemed to be quite upset about Torak’s willingness to feed him to the wolves.’

  ‘I wonder if our brother’s starting to have some regrets about changing sides yet,’ Belkira said with an almost saintly smile.

  ‘I rather think that Zedar’s going to follow his Master’s lead in this,’ I told them. ‘Zedar just adores his own skin, so he’s not likely to risk it. More probably he’ll order some Grolim priest – or several Grolim priests – to stick their necks out instead. Grolims are fanatics anyway, and the notion of dying for their God fills them with ecstasy.’

  ‘We could speculate all night about that,’ father said. ‘Just to be on the safe side, though, we’d better assume that they’ll try it and that it’ll work. If it doesn’t, fine; if it does, we’d better be ready. We might as well try to get some sleep now. I think we’ll all need to be alert tomorrow.’

  The conference broke up, but father caught me in the hall afterward. ‘I think we’d better start repositioning our forces,’ he said. ‘I’ll go tell Cho-Ram and Rhodar to start closing up the gap between them and Torak’s east flank. Then I’ll go talk with Brand and Ormik and have them ease down from the north. I want those armies to be in place and fresh when Beldin gets here the day after tomorrow. Keep an eye on things here, Pol. Zedar might decide to get an early start.’

  ‘I’ll see to it, father,’ I replied.

  It was well before dawn when Zedar’s new engines began hurling rocks at Vo Mimbre. He’d constructed mangonels, over-sized catapults that could throw half-ton boulders at the walls. The thunderous crashing of those boulders shook every building in Vo Mimbre, and the sound was positively deafening. Worse yet, Zedar’s new engines had enough range to put them back out of the reach of Asturian arrows.

  When father returned, he suggested that the twins could plagiarize from Zedar and build mangonels for us as well. As is always the case when there’s a parity of weaponry, the defenders of any fortified place have the advantage. Zedar was hurling rocks at our walls; we were throwing rocks – or fire – at people. Our walls stood; Torak’s Angaraks didn’t. Our showers of fist-sized rocks brained Angaraks by the score, and our rain-squalls of burning pitch created new comets right on the spot, since people who are on fire always seem to want to run somewhere.

  Zedar became desperate at that point, and he uncharacteristically risked his own neck to summon a wind-storm to deflect the arrows of the Asturian archers when he mounted his next frontal assault. That was a mistake, of course. The twins knew Zedar very well, and they recognized the difference between his Will and that of some expendable Grolim’s. All they had to do at that point was follow his lead. If Zedar didn’t evaporate in a puff of smoke when he used the Will and the Word to do something, it was obviously safe to do something similar in the same way. Zedar had to take chances, but as long as we simply followed his lead, we weren’t in any danger. Blazing the trail in a dangerous situation probably didn’t make Zedar very happy, but Torak’s ultimatum didn’t give him much choice. The twins erected a barrier of pure force, and Zedar’s wind-storm was neatly divided to flow around the dead calm which had been suddenly clapped over Vo Mimbre.

  Then, driven to desperation, Zedar enlisted the Grolim priests to help him dry out the sea of mud surrounding the besieged city. It took father and the twins a while to realize what was afoot, but by the time Zedar mixed the now-dry mud with his wind-storm to send clouds of billowing dust toward our walls, I’d already arrived at a solution. The twins and I broke off a piece of Zedar’s wind-storm, sent it swirling, tornado-like, several miles down the River Arend, and then brought it back in the form of a waterspout. Then we relaxed our grip on it. The resulting downpour laid the dust, and we saw a horde of Murgos who’d been tiptoeing through the obscuring dust-storm. The Asturian archers took it from there.

  Father’s contribution to the affair was a bit childish, but he seemed to enjoy it. Giving an enemy an abbreviated version of the seven-year itch doesn’t really accomplish very much, but father was quite proud of it, for some reason.

  And so we’d survived the second day of the battle. I knew just how significant that was, but I hadn’t bothered to share the information – largely at mother’s insistence. ‘It would only confuse them, Pol,’ she assured m
e. ‘Men confuse easily anyway, so let’s just keep the importance of the third day to ourselves. Let’s not give your father an opportunity to wallow in excessive cleverness. He might upset the balance of things that are supposed to happen.’

  I’m sorry to have let that out, mother, but father’s been just a little too smug lately. Maybe it’s time for him to find out what really happened at Vo Mimbre.

  The Arendish poet, Davoul the Lame, a weedy-looking fellow with a bad limp and an exaggerated opinion of his own rather mediocre talent, perpetrated a literary monstrosity he called ‘The Latter Days of the House of Mimbre,’ during which he made much of Torak’s refusal to emerge from his rusty resting place. Davoul didn’t explain the Dragon-God’s reluctance, but I think that those of you who’ve been paying attention have already guessed exactly what was behind it. To put it quite bluntly, Torak was afraid of that third day, since the Ashabine Oracles told him that if his duel with the Child of Light were to take place on that third day, he’d lose. Evidently, he’d been forbidden to come out on the second day, so he’d been forced to rely on Zedar to take the city. Zedar had failed, and now Torak faced that day he so feared. When you get right down to it, though, all he really had to do was stay home. If he’d done that, he’d have won.

  Don’t rush me. I’ll get to why he came out in my own time.

  The key to our entire campaign was the Tolnedran legions, of course, so just before dawn, I flew down the River Arend to make sure that Eldrig’s war-boats were coming upstream with those vital reinforcements. I’ll admit that I was enormously relieved to see that they were approximately where they were supposed to be. Then Beltira left the city to join the forces we had deployed to the east, Belkira went north to join the Sendars, Rivans and Asturians, and father and I simply flew out and settled in a tree to watch and to call out our commands. Father, of course, was totally unaware of the fact that I wasn’t alone in that now-familiar owl. Fooling my father wasn’t very difficult – or very important. What really mattered was the fact that Torak didn’t know that mother was there either. Mother was the Master’s hidden disciple, and Torak didn’t even know that she existed. I’m absolutely convinced that it was her presence at Vo Mimbre that ultimately defeated the One-eyed God.

  The business with all that horn-blowing had been father’s idea. It didn’t actually serve any purpose – except to satisfy father’s need for high drama. Members of our family were spread around among our forces, and we had much more subtle ways to communicate than tootling at each other, but father stubbornly insisted upon those periodic horn-concertos. I’ll admit that the Arends absolutely loved the idea of mysterious horn-blasts echoing from the nearby hills and also that those calls and responses made the Angaraks very nervous. The Nadraks in particular were edgy about the horn calls, and so Yar lek Thun sent scouts out into the woods to see what was happening. The Asturian archers with Brand’s force were waiting for them, and Yar lek Thun didn’t get the reports he yearned for.

  Then Ad Rak Cthoros of the Murgos sent out scouts to the east, and the Algar cavalry disposed of them as well.

  At the next call of the horns, we got the answer we’d been waiting for. Uncle Beldin and General Cerran responded with a chorus of Tolnedran trumpets. The Chereks and the Tolnedran legions had arrived on the battlefield.

  That’s when father, our resident field-marshal, soared up to his post high above to direct his forces. When everything on the ground was to his satisfaction, he ordered Brand to give the signal for our opening ploy. Brand sounded two horn blasts, and they were echoed by Cho-Ram. Mandor’s answer was immediately followed by the banging open of the gates of Vo Mimbre and the thundering charge of the Mimbrate knights.

  Zedar – who should have known better – took the form of a raven and flew out of the iron pavilion to see what we were doing.

  Mother surprised me at that point. Without any warning at all, she launched our shared form from our perch and lifted us high above that flapping black raven. Since we were so totally merged, I shared her thoughts and feelings, and I was more than a little surprised to discover that mother’s enmity for Zedar predated his apostasy. Mother, it appeared, had disliked Zedar the first time she’d laid eyes on him. I got the distinct impression that he’d said something to father about her that’d earned him a special place in her heart. Father’s always believed that the owl that came plummeting out of the sky that morning was simply trying to frighten Zedar, but he was wrong. Mother was trying her very best to kill Zedar.

  I wonder how things might have turned out if she’d succeeded.

  The charge of the Mimbrate knights at the Battle of Vo Mimbre has spawned whole libraries of mediocre poetry, but from a strategic point of view, its only purpose was to pin the Malloreans in place, and it did exactly that. It was dramatic, noisy, noble, and very stirring, but it was really rather secondary. Torak’s understanding of battle tactics was really quite limited, since he’d never really engaged in a battle between equally matched forces before. During the War of the Gods, he’d been outnumbered. During this war, it’d been the other way around. He’d assumed that the attacks on his armies would come from his flanks and his rear, and he’d placed his hordes of Malloreans in the center to reinforce the Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls when necessary. The suicidal charge of the Mimbrates prevented the Malloreans from meeting other dangers, and it forced Torak, surrounded and outmaneuvered, to accept Brand’s challenge, the one thing he really didn’t want to do.

  Then Zedar tried again, as a deer this time. I’ve always had some suspicions about that. Given Zedar’s nature, isn’t it possible that he was simply trying to run away? The form of a deer was a serious blunder, however, as I’m sure Zedar realized when father started biting chunks out of his haunches.

  Our combined forces inexorably tightened around the Angaraks. Torak’s army began to suffer dreadful casualties. Individual Angarak soldiers began to look longingly at the far banks of the River Arend. I now saw why Kal Torak had so feared this third day of battle.

  I’ll concede that father’s generalship during the battles was masterly. He countered the enemy’s every move almost before Zedar made it. The charge of the Mimbrate knights was decimating the Malloreans, but even before Zedar could issue orders to the Murgos, father unleashed Beltira and his combined force of Algars, Drasnians and Ulgo irregulars, effectively pinning down the most numerous of the Western Angaraks.

  With the legions and Eldrig’s Cherek berserkers marching up the Valley, Zedar didn’t dare weaken his right flank by ordering the Nadraks and Thulls to come in and reinforce the Malloreans. The only available force Zedar had left were his reserves, and once he committed them to the battle raging before the city gates, Belkira was free to advance against the Angarak rear.

  It was at that stage of the battle that mother and I, still merged in our assumed form, drifted across the bloody ground toward Torak’s pavilion. Battlefield intelligence has always been sketchy at best. Many a battle has been lost simply because ordinary generals have to wait for couriers or scouts to report enemy movements before they can respond. Father didn’t have that problem. The rest of us could – and did – communicate with him directly and almost instantaneously. Moreover, mother and I could eavesdrop on Torak and Zedar and pass along what we heard, so father could counter Zedar’s moves before he even made them.

  Zedar was pleading with Torak to arm himself and go out of the pavilion to strengthen Angarak resolve, but the Dragon-God adamantly refused, since this was the day he’d so long feared.

  I’ve looked into the Ashabine Oracles recently, and I can’t for the life of me see how Torak erred so profoundly in his interpretation of certain passages. He evidently assumed automatically that he was – and almost always would be – the Child of Dark. Then, by extension, he leapt to the conclusion that the Child of Light would always be the Rivan King, Iron-grip’s heir. That combination did take place at Cthol Mishrak when Garion ultimately destroyed Torak, but that was a different EVENT, and it t
ook place in a different war, some five hundred years later. Torak evidently confused the two, and that was the error that won the day for us at Vo Mimbre.

  Despite Zedar’s shrill importunings, Torak himself remained quite calm. ‘It is not yet time for me to go forth to confront mine enemies, Zedar,’ he said. ‘As I have told thee, this day is in the hands of pure chance. I do further assure thee, however, that one EVENT shall precede my meeting with the Child of Light, and in that EVENT shall I prevail, for it shall be a contest of Wills, and my Will doth far outstrip the Will of the one who shall contend with me. That is the contest which shall decide this day’s outcome.’

  Merged though we were, some of mother’s thought still remained concealed from me, but I did catch a faint tightening of her resolve. Mother was obviously preparing herself for something, and she was deliberately keeping it from me.

  ‘I must reinforce the Malloreans, Master,’ Zedar was saying with a note of desperation. ‘Have I thy permission to commit such forces as we are holding in reserve?’

  ‘As it seemeth best to thee, Zedar,’ Torak replied with that God-like indifference that must have driven his disciple wild.

  Zedar went to the entrance of the pavilion and issued his commands to the couriers posted outside. A short while later, the Angarak reserves began their march toward the battle raging before the city gates – even as the Chereks and General Cerran’s legions broke through the Nadrak lines to come to the aid of the Mimbrate knights.

  Then, as the confusion on the battlefield increased, father added to it by telling uncle Belkira to unleash the Rivans, Sendars and Asturian archers who’d been concealed in the forest to the north. Bleak and silent, they emerged to occupy the positions Zedar’s reserves had just vacated.