The messengers, all bearing bad news, almost had to line up outside the iron pavilion at that point.
‘Lord Zedar!’ the first exclaimed in a shrill voice, ‘King Ad rak Cthoros is slain, and the Murgos are in confusion!’
‘Lord Zedar!’ the second courier interrupted, ‘the Nadraks and Thulls are in disarray and do attempt to take flight!’
‘Lord Zedar!’ the third bearer of bad tidings broke in, ‘the force to our north is vast! There are Asturian archers with them, and their longbows will obliterate our reserves! Our center is in deadly peril, and the reserves will be unable to come to their aid! We cannot attack the archers, because they are protected by Sendars and Rivans!
Rivans!’ Torak roared. ‘The Rivans have come to this place to confront me?’
‘Yea, most Holy,’ the now terrified messenger replied. ‘The grey-cloaks do march with the Sendars and Asturians upon our rear! Our fate is sealed!’
‘Kill him,’ Torak told one of the Grolims standing in attendance. ‘It is not the place of a messenger to speculate.’
Two Grolims, their eyes alight with fanatic zeal, fell upon the unfortunate messenger, their knives flashing. He groaned, and then fell to the floor.
‘Doth he who stands at the forefront of the Rivans bear a sword?’ Torak demanded of the other messengers, who all stood ashen faced and staring at their fallen compatriot.
‘Yea, oh my God,’ one of them replied, his voice squeaky with terror.
‘And doth that sword flame in his hands?’
‘Nay, my God. It doth seem but an ordinary sword.’
‘Now is my victory assured!’ Torak exulted.
‘My Lord?’ Zedar sounded baffled.
‘He who doth come against me is not the Rivan King, Zedar! It is not the Godslayer whom I must face this day! His sword is but common iron, and it is not infused by the might of Cthrag Yaska! Verily, upon this day I will prevail. Bid my servants arm me, Zedar, for now I will go forth from this place, and the world shall be mine!’
‘Father!’ I almost shouted the thought. ‘Torak’s coming out!’
‘Of course he is, Pol,’ father replied smugly. ‘That’s just the way I planned it.’ Trust father to take credit for almost anything that happens. ‘Come out of there now. It’s time for you and me to join Brand. Don’t dawdle, Pol. We don’t want to be late.’
‘I do wish he’d grow up.’ Mother’s thought was almost clinical as we wriggled back out of the narrow window. Things were moving very fast now, but I still had time to develop a strong suspicion that something was about to happen that I wouldn’t like. That suspicion was powerfully reinforced by the fact that this time, mother remained merged with me when we discarded our owl. She’d never done that before, and she adamantly refused to explain it.
Brand was evidently in the grip of that powerful awareness that’s characteristic of the Children of Light. He seemed almost inhumanly calm and completely detached from what was about to happen.
Immediately after father arrived, however, Brand’s expression and manner abruptly changed. His face took on a look of inhuman resolve, and when he spoke it was in a voice of thunder or the deep subterranean roar of an earthquake. ‘In the name of Belar I defy thee, Torak, maimed and accursed! In the name of Aldur also I cast my despite into thy teeth! Let the bloodshed be abated, and I will meet thee – man against God – and I shall prevail against thee! Before thee I cast my gage! Take it up or stand exposed as craven before men and Gods!’
Torak, with Zedar close behind him, had come out of that ridiculous tin castle by now, and Brand’s challenge didn’t seem to sit too well with the God of Angarak. He roared out his rage and lashed out with his massive sword, shattering boulders and showering the area around him with sparks. That’s when Zedar bolted.
‘Who among mortal kind is so foolish as to thus defy the King of the World?’ Torak bellowed. ‘Who among ye would contend with a God?’
‘I am Brand, Warder of Riva, and I defy thee, foul and misshapen Godling, and all thy putrid host! Bring forth thy might! Take up my gage or slink away and come no more against the kingdoms of the west!’
The entire purpose of the challenge, of course, had been to so enrage Torak that his mind would stop functioning. Had the God of Angarak been thinking clearly, he’d have smelled the trap being set for him. His rage, however, seems to have obliterated any suspicion or even any traces of sanity. ‘BEHOLD!’ he said in a mighty voice, ‘I am Torak, King of Kings and Lord of Lords! I fear no man of mortal kind nor the dim shades of long-forgotten gods! I will go forth and destroy this loud-mouthed Rivan fool, and mine enemies shall fall away before my wrath, and Cthrag Yaska shall be mine again, and the world also!’
And that, of course, was what the entire battle, the whole war, had been all about. Everything we’d suffered had only had one goal – to get Torak close enough to the Master’s Orb so that it could dispose of him.
The thunderous exchange had stunned both armies into immobility. The fighting broke off as Kal Torak strode north through his cringing troops and Brand, with my wolfish father trotting along beside him and mother and I in our combined owl hovering over his head, marched south to meet his enemy.
When they were about twenty paces apart, an EVENT occurred, an EVENT that father didn’t even notice. Brand identified himself and added a few more insults just for good measure to keep Torak’s brain on fire.
Torak, however, spoke to father. ‘Begone, Belgarath,’ he warned. ‘Flee if thou wouldst save thy life.’
Father responded appropriately, snarling his defiance.
Then Torak fixed his single eye on me, but he did not threaten. His tone was honeyed, and the force of his Will overpowering. ‘Abjure thy father, Polgara, and come with me. I will wed thee and make thee Queen of all the world, and thy might and thy power shall be second only to mine.’
I’ve seen small, helpless creatures in the presence of a snake on occasion. The mouse or rabbit knows that the snake is there, and he knows that it’s dangerous, but he seems frozen in place, unable to move as the reptile slowly approaches. I found myself in much the same condition. Torak’s Will had simply overwhelmed me.
The histories of that brief encounter all state that I screamed my defiance of the One-eyed God, but I didn’t. I was unable to utter even a single sound. Torak had met me, and he had conquered me. His single eye burned with triumph as he felt all of my defenses crumble.
What Torak didn’t know, and could not know, was that he faced three of the Master’s disciples in that moment rather than just two, and he didn’t even know of the existence of the third. It was the third disciple who defeated him at Vo Mimbre, probably because the third disciple had ties not only to Aldur, but also to UL, Torak’s own father.
Our owl, trembling in every feather, hovered indecisively over Brand’s head, and then I felt the whole of my awareness shunted off into a very small corner of our shared form, and the third disciple, my mother, took over. I’ve been in the presence of Gods many times, but I’ve never felt anything as overpowering as mother’s Will on that day. She drew that force about her and hurled it directly into Torak’s teeth. Had he been human, that force would have exploded him into atoms. The vehicle of her Will was our shared voice, and had it not been so carefully directed, it probably would have shattered glass in all the kingdoms of the west. Because that voice was so tightly controlled and directed, I don’t think anyone actually recognized just how enormous it really was. Birds squawk, warble, tweet, and scream all the time, and nobody really pays much attention. Torak didn’t shrug it off, though. Mother’s shriek of defiance carried overtones of the voice of Aldur, and it also was the voice of UL. Torak’s Will, which he thought to be so overwhelming, had been directed at me, since he didn’t even know that mother was there. The shriek of response, which he thought was coming from me, was so vast that it made the blow he’d aimed at me seem puny by comparison. The maimed God of Angarak was suddenly made uncertain and afraid. I think I may be the only one who
saw him visibly flinch when it struck him or saw the burning of the Eye that Was Not flicker with fear and indecision. It was at that point that Torak’s supreme self-confidence shriveled within him, and he was filled with self-doubt when he faced the Rivan Warder. That doubt and fear made the outcome inevitable:
History reports that it was Brand who defeated Torak that day before the walls of Vo Mimbre, but history is wrong. It was mother who defeated him, and she used our combined voice to do it. In a peculiar way, my mother won the Battle of Vo Mimbre.
Part Seven:
Annath
Chapter 34
‘Prepare then to perish all!’ Torak thundered, but the faint hint of doubt in his voice suggested that he was not as absolutely certain as his doomsday pronouncement seemed to indicate. The Ashabine Oracles had warned him about the third day of the battle, but so firm was his belief that he’d face the Rivan King and his star-born sword on that day that when it was Brand who offered the challenge, Torak exultantly believed that he’d won and that the warning about the third day was no longer valid. It was that and only that that persuaded him to come out of the iron pavilion on that fatal day. What he failed to realize was that Brand wasn’t his opponent on that field, it was the Master’s Orb.
He’d emerged from his pavilion sublimely convinced that he was going to get everything he wanted on this day, and it was that conviction that led him to hurl his Will at me; but mother had simply shunted me out of the way and had answered for me, disdainfully rejecting him. The appearance of Brand instead of the Rivan King suggested to Torak that he’d win; mother’s scornful rejection suggested that he’d lose. Torak was a God, and he wasn’t equipped to deal with uncertainty. Thus it was with doubt gnawing at his soul that he rushed at Brand, flailing at him with that huge sword. There almost seemed to be a kind of desperation in his charge. Brand, on the other hand, seemed calm, even abstracted. His responses were studied, one might almost say slightly bored.
The duel seemed to last forever, with Torak growing more frenzied and Brand growing progressively more indifferent. Finally, the Dragon-God hacked his way through Brand’s defenses and cut a deep gash in Brand’s shoulder, and that was the signal we’d been waiting for without even knowing that we were waiting for it. I strongly suspect that it was part of the agreement between the contending Purposes that Torak had to draw blood before Brand could overwhelm him. Brand’s shoulder gushed blood and father howled even as I screamed.
Then Brand was unleashed. His studied, almost bored expression vanished, replaced with an intent alertness. He scraped his sword-edge down across the face of his shield, cutting away the soldier’s cloak which had hidden what was embedded in the shield’s center. The Master’s Orb, all ablaze, struck the Dragon-God full in the face with its fire.
Of course that had been what the whole war had been about. We’d spent ten years and sacrificed thousands of lives with no other purpose than to bring Torak to a place where he’d be forced to face the Orb at a certain predetermined place and time.
I don’t think any of us had fully understood just how painful the presence of the Orb would be for the God of Angarak. He screamed as its baleful fire struck him and seared his face again. Screaming still, he cast off his shield and threw away his sword, desperately trying to cover his face.
And that’s when Brand struck him down. Swiftly seizing his sword-hilt in both hands, the Rivan Warder drove his blade directly into the maimed God’s left eye-socket where the Eye that was Not still blazed as brightly as it had on that day almost fifty centuries before when the Orb had punished him for raising it to crack the world.
Torak shrieked again, staggering back. He jerked Brand’s sword from his eye, and bright blood gushed forth. Weeping blood, the God of Angarak stood stock still for a moment. Then he toppled, and the very earth shuddered.
I don’t believe that anyone on that vast battlefield moved or made a sound for the space of a hundred heartbeats after that thunderous fall. What had just happened was such a titanic EVENT that I was a bit surprised that the sun didn’t falter and then stop in his inexorable course. I was probably the only one there who heard a single sound – the exulting sound of mother’s howls of triumph. My mother’s spent thousands of years in the form of the woman we know as Poledra, but down in the deepest levels of her being, she’s still a wolf.
My own sense of triumph was heavily overlaid with relief. I’m usually very sure of myself, but my brief encounter with Torak’s Will had shaken me to the core of my being. I’d discovered that when Torak commanded, I had to obey, and that discovery had filled me with uncertainty and terror.
What followed the fall of Torak wasn’t pleasant. The Angaraks were surrounded and completely demoralized. To massacre them – and there’s no other word for it – was excessive, to say the very least. Brand, however, was implacable. Finally, General Cerran firmly suggested that enough was enough, but Brand was an Alorn at the very bottom, and when it comes to killing Angaraks, no Alorn can ever get enough. The butchery went on through the night, and when the sun rose, there weren’t any live Angaraks left on the battlefield.
Then, when there was no one left to kill, Brand, his wounded shoulder bandaged and his arm in a sling, ordered his Alorns to bring Torak’s body to him so that he could ‘look upon the face of the King of the World’ – only Torak’s body wasn’t there anymore. That’s when Brand rather peremptorily sent for my family and me. The twins, Beldin, father and I picked our way across the littered field to the hilltop where Brand stood surveying the wreckage of Angarak. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded of us in a tone I really didn’t like much.
‘Where’s who?’ Beldin replied.
‘Torak, of course. Nobody seems to be able to find his body.’
‘What an amazing thing,’ Beldin said sardonically. ‘You didn’t actually think you’d find him, did you? Zedar carried him off just as soon as the sun went down.’
‘He what?’
‘Didn’t you tell him?’ Beldin said to father.
‘He didn’t need to know about it. If he had, he might have tried to stop it.’
‘What’s going on here?’ Brand’s regal tone was starting to irritate me.
‘It was part of the agreement between the Necessities,’ father explained. ‘In exchange for your victory, you weren’t to be allowed to keep Torak’s body – not that it’d have done any good if you had. This wasn’t the last EVENT, Brand, and we haven’t seen the last of Torak.’
‘But he’s dead.’
‘No, Brand,’ I told him as gently as I could. ‘You didn’t really think that sword of yours could kill him, did you? The only sword that can do that is still hanging on the wall back at Riva.’
‘Hang it all, Pol!’ he exclaimed. ‘Nobody survives a sword-thrust through the head!’
‘Except a God, Brand. He’s comatose, but he will wake up again. The final duel’s still out in the future, and that one’s going to involve Torak and the Rivan king. That’ll be the one where they take out their real swords and where somebody really gets killed. You did very well here, dear one, but try to keep your perspective. What happened here was really nothing more than a skirmish.’
I could tell that he really didn’t like that, but his distinctly imperial behavior was starting to run away with him, and I felt that he needed to be brought up short. ‘Then all of this has been for nothing,’ he said dejectedly.
‘I wouldn’t exactly call it nothing, Brand,’ father said. ‘If Torak had won here, he’d own the world. You stopped him. That counts for something, doesn’t it?’
Brand sighed. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. Then he looked out over the bloody field. ‘I guess we’d better clean this up. It’s summer, and if we just leave all those bodies lying out there to rot, there’ll be a pestilence in Vo Mimbre before the snow flies.’
The funeral pyres were vast, and it took every tree from the forest just to the north to consume all those dead Angaraks.
After we’d tidied up, we discove
red that Aldorigen and Eldallan had gone off some distance to discuss their differences. The discussion was evidently quite spirited, since they were both dead when they were finally discovered. There was a rather profound object-lesson in that fact. If Mimbre and Asturia were to continue their centuries-old squabble, it was quite obvious that they’d soon go down that very same road.
There were hot-heads on both sides who’d have preferred to ignore the obvious, but Mandorin and Wildantor, the two Arendish heroes of the battle, stepped in to put an end to the bickering by the simple expedient of offering to fight any of their compatriots who were too fond of their antagonism to listen to reason. There’s a certain direct charm to the assertion that ‘If you don’t do it my way, I’ll kill you.’
Anyway, the two Arendish friends approached Brand with an absurd proposal. They offered him the crown of Arendia. As luck had it, I was close enough to Brand to dig my elbow sharply into his ribs to keep him from laughing in their faces. He managed to keep a straight face and diplomatically declined, pleading a prior commitment.
That bell that rings inside my head when two young people who are destined to marry meet for the first time had already given me the answer to Arendia’s political problems, and I’d obliquely suggested it to Brand – quite some time before the battle, actually. When he raised the possibility to Mandorin and Wildantor, however, they both burst out laughing. The reason for their laughter became obvious when the proposal was presented to Korodullin and Mayaserana. Terms such as ‘Mimbrate butcher’ and ‘outlaw wench’ do not bode well for the prospects of a happy marriage.
That’s when I stepped in. ‘Why don’t you children think this over before you make a final decision?’ I suggested. ‘You both need to calm down and talk it over between you – in private.’ Then I ordered them to be locked up together in a little room at the top of the south tower of the palace.
“They’ll kill each other, Pol,’ father predicted when we were alone.
Polgara the Sorceress Page 69