‘I was in disguise, Anrak,’ she helped him out.
‘Really? Why was that?’
‘It was one of those sorceress things you mentioned.’
‘Oh, one of those. It was a very good disguise, Lady Polgara. You were an absolute mess.’
‘I wouldn’t push that too much further, Anrak,’ Beldaran advised. ‘Why don’t we have some breakfast and start packing instead? I really want to see my new home.’
We set sail later on that same day, and we arrived at Riva’s city two days afterward. His people were all down at the beach waiting for us - well, for Beldaran, actually. I don’t imagine that the Rivans were very interested in looking at Beldin and me, but they really wanted to get a look at their new queen. Riva hovered protectively over her. He didn’t want anybody admiring her too much.
I’m sure they got his point - at least where Beldaran was concerned. There were other things to be admired, however.
‘You’d better get yourself a club,’ Beldin muttered to me.
‘What?’
‘A club, Belgarath - a stout stick with a big end.’
‘What do I need with a club?’
‘Use your eyes, Belgarath. Take a long, hard look at Polgara, and then look at the faces of all those young Alorns standing on the beach. Believe me, you’re going to need a club.’
I didn’t, exactly, but I made a special point of not letting Pol out of my sight while we were on the Isle of the Winds. I suspect that I might have been more comfortable if Pol had held off on emerging from her cocoon for a while. I was proud of her, of course, but her altered appearance made me very nervous. She was young and inexperienced, and the young men on the Isle were obviously very much taken with her.
My strategy was quite simple. I sat in plain view and scowled. I was wearing one of those ridiculous white robes people are always trying to foist off on me, and I carried a long staff - much as I had in Arendia and Tolnedra. I had quite a reputation among Alorns, and those absurd trappings enhanced it and got my point across. The young Rivans were polite and attentive - which was fine. But they didn’t try to lure Polgara off into dark corners - which wouldn’t have been.
Pol, of course, was having the time of her life. She didn’t exactly encourage that crowd of suitors, but she smiled a great deal and even laughed now and then. It’s a cruel thing to suggest, but I suspect that she even enjoyed the fact that young Rivan girls frequently left the room where she was holding court so that they could go someplace private. Gnawing on your own liver isn’t the sort of thing you want to do in public.
We’d been in the Hall of the Rivan King for about a week when a fleet of Cherek war-boats sailed into the harbor. The other Alorn kings had arrived for Riva’s wedding.
It was good to see Cherek and his sons again, although we didn’t really have much chance to talk. Pol assured me that she could take care of herself, but I didn’t feel like taking chances.
Yes, Polgara, I was jealous. Aren’t fathers supposed to be jealous? I knew what those young men had on their minds, and I was not going to leave you alone with them.
A couple of days after Cherek and the boys had arrived, Beldin came looking for me. I was in my usual place wearing my usual scowl, and Polgara was busy breaking hearts. ‘I think you’d better have a talk with Bear-shoulders,’ he told me.
‘Oh?’
‘Riva’s wedding’s starting to give Dras and Algar some ideas.’
‘What kind of ideas?’
‘Grow up, Belgarath. Regardless of how Riva and Beldaran feel about each other, this is a political marriage.’
‘Theological, actually.’
‘It means the same thing. Dras and Algar are starting to think about the advantages that might be involved in a marriage to Polgara.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘I’m not the one who’s thinking about it, so don’t blame me if it’s ridiculous. Sooner or later, one of them’s going to go to Cherek and ask him to speak with you about it. Then he’ll come to you with some kind of proposal. You’d better head that off before he embarrasses himself. We still need the Alorns on our side.’
I swore and stood up. ‘Can you keep an eye on Polgara for me?’
‘Why not?’
‘Watch out for that tall one with the blond hair. Pol’s paying a little too much attention to him for my comfort.’
‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘Don’t do anything permanent to him. He’s the son of a clan-chief, and this Isle’s a little too confined for a clan war.’ Then I went looking for Cherek Bear-shoulders.
I stretched the truth just a bit when I told him that Aldur had instructed me to keep Pol with me in the Vale and that she wasn’t supposed to get married for quite some time. Once I’d headed off their father, Dras and Algar could make all the proposals to him they wanted to. He wouldn’t act as their go-between.
Bear-shoulders had aged since we’d gone to Mallorea. His hair and beard were shot with grey now, and a lot of the fun seemed to have gone out of his eyes. He told me that the Nadraks had been scouting along Bull-neck’s eastern border and that the Murgos had been coming down the eastern escarpment and probing into Algaria.
‘We probably ought to discourage that,’ I told him.
‘Dras and Algar are taking care of it,’ he replied. ‘Technically speaking, there’s still a state of war between us and the Angaraks, so we could probably justify a certain amount of firmness if the issue ever came up in court.’
‘Cherek, we’re talking about international politics here. There aren’t any laws, and there aren’t any courts.’
He sighed. ‘The world’s getting more civilized all the time, Belgarath,’ he said mournfully. ‘The Tolnedrans are always trying to come up with picky little restrictions.’
‘Oh?’
‘They’ve been trying to get me to agree to outlaw what they call “piracy”. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you ever heard of? There aren’t any laws on the high seas. What happens out there isn’t anybody’s business. Why drag judges and lawyers into it?’
‘Tolnedrans are like that sometimes. Tell Dras and Algar to find wives someplace else, would you please? Polgara’s not available at the moment.’
‘I’ll mention it to them.’
The Alorn calendar was a little imprecise in those days. The Alorns kept a count of years, but they didn’t bother attaching names to the months the way the Tolnedrans did. Alorns just kept track of the seasons and let it go at that, so I can’t really give you the precise date of the wedding of Beldaran and Riva. It was three weeks or so after the arrival of Riva’s father and brothers, though. About ten days before the wedding, Polgara set aside her campaign to break every heart on the Isle of the Winds, and she and Beldaran went into an absolute frenzy of dressmaking. With the help of several good-natured Alorn girls, they rebuilt Beldaran’s wedding dress from the ground up, and then they turned their attention to a suitable gown for the bride’s sister. Beldaran had always enjoyed sewing, but Pol’s fondness for that activity dates from that period in her life. Sewing keeps a lady’s fingers busy, but it gives her plenty of time to talk. I’m not really sure what those ladies talked about during those ten days, because they always stopped whenever I entered the room. Evidently it was the sort of thing ladies prefer not to share with men. Polgara apparently gave her sister all sorts of advice about married life - although how she found out about such things is beyond me. How much information could she have picked up sitting in a tree surrounded by birds?
Anyway, the happy day finally arrived. Riva was very nervous, but Beldaran seemed serene. The ceremony took place in the Hall of the Rivan King - Riva’s throne room. A throne room probably isn’t the best place to hold a wedding, but Riva insisted, explaining that he wanted to be married in the presence of the Orb and that it might have been a little inappropriate for him to wear his sword into the temple of Belar. That was Riva for you.
There are all sorts of obscure little ceremo
nies involved in weddings, the meanings of which have long since been lost. The bridegroom is supposed to get there first, for example, and he’s supposed to be surrounded by burly people who are there to deal firmly with anyone who objects. Riva had plenty of those, of course. His father, his brothers, and his cousin, all in bright-burnished mail shirts, bulked large around him as he stood at the front of the hall. I’d firmly taken Bull-neck’s axe away from him and made him wear a sheathed sword instead. Dras was an enthusiast, and I didn’t want him to start chopping up wedding guests just to demonstrate how much he loved his younger brother.
Once they’d settled down and the clinking of their mail had subsided, Beldin provided a fanfare to announce the bride’s arrival. Beldin absolutely adored Beldaran, and he got a bit carried away. I’m almost positive that the citizens of Tol Honeth, hundreds of leagues to the south, paused in the business of swindling each other to remark, ‘What was that?’ when the sound of a thousand silver trumpets shattered the air of the Rivan throne room. That fanfare was followed by an inhumanly suppressed choir of female voices - a few hundred or so, I’d imagine - whispering a hymn to the bride. Beldin had studied music for a couple of quiet centuries once, and that hymn was very impressive, but eighty-four-part harmony is just a little complicated for my taste.
Armored Alorns swung the great doors of the Hall of the Rivan King open, and Beldaran, all in white, stepped into the precise center of that doorway. I knew it was the precise center because I’d measured it eight times and cut a mark into the stones of the floor that’s probably still there. Beldaran, pale as the moon, stood in that framing archway while all those Alorns turned in their seats to crane their necks and look at her.
Somewhere, a great bell began to peal. After the wedding, I went looking for that bell, but I never found it.
Then my youngest daughter was touched with a soft white light that grew more and more intense.
Polgara, wrapped in a blue velvet cloak, stepped forward to take my arm. ‘Are you doing that?’ she asked me, inclining her head toward the shaft of light illuminating her sister.
‘Not me, Pol,’ I replied. ‘I was just going to ask if you were doing it.’
‘Maybe it’s uncle Beldin.’ She slightly shrugged her shoulders, and her cloak softly fell away to reveal her gown. I almost choked when I saw it.
Beldaran was all in white, and she glowed like pale flame in that shaft of light that I’m almost certain was a wedding gift from the funny old fellow in the rickety cart. Polgara was all in blue, and her gown broke away from her shoulders in complex folds and ruffles trimmed with snowy lace. It was cut somewhat daringly for the day, leaving no question that she was a girl. That deep blue gown was almost like a breaking wave, and Polgara rose out of it like a Goddess rising from the sea.
I controlled myself as best I could. ‘Nice dress,’ I said from between clenched teeth.
‘Oh, this old thing?’ she said deprecatingly, touching one of the ruffles in an off-hand way. Then she laughed a warm, throaty laugh that was far older than her years, and she actually kissed me. She’d never willingly done that before, and it startled me so much that I barely heard the alarm bells ringing in my head.
We separated and took the glowing bride, one on either arm, and, with stately, measured pace and slow, delivered up our beloved Beldaran to the adoring King of the Isle of the Winds.
I had quite a bit on my mind at that point, so I more or less ignored the wedding sermon of the High Priest of Belar. Anyway, if you’ve heard one wedding sermon, you’ve heard them all. There came a point in the ceremony, though, when something a little out of the ordinary happened.
My Master’s Orb began to glow a deep, deep blue that almost perfectly matched the color of Polgara’s gown. We were all terribly happy that Beldaran and Riva were getting married, but it seemed to me that the Orb was far more impressed with Polgara than with her sister. I’ll take an oath that I really saw what happened next, although no one else who was there will admit that he saw it, too. That’s probably what half-persuaded me that I’d been seeing things that weren’t really there. The Orb, as I say, began to glow, but it always did that when Riva was around, so there was nothing really unusual about that.
What was unusual was the fact Polgara began to glow as well. She seemed faintly infused with that same pale blue light, but the absolutely white lock at her brow was not pale. It was an incandescent blue.
And then I seemed to hear the faint flutter of ghostly wings coming from the back of the hall. That was the part that made me question the accuracy of my own senses.
It seemed, though, that Polgara heard it, too, because she turned around. And with profoundest respect and love, she curtsied with heart-stopping grace to the misty image of the snowy white owl perched in the rafters at the back of the Hall of the Rivan King.
PART FOUR
Polgara
Chapter 23
All right, don’t beat me over the head with it. Of course I should have realized that something very peculiar was going on. But if you’ll just stop and think about it for a moment, I believe you’ll understand. You’ll recall that Poledra’s apparent death had driven me quite mad. A man who has to be chained to his bed has problems. Then I’d spent two or three years pickling my brains in the waterfront dives in Camaar and another eight or nine entertaining the ladies of Mar Amon, and during all that time I saw a lot of things that weren’t really there. I’d grown so accustomed to that sort of thing that whenever I saw something unusual, I just shrugged it off as another hallucination. The incident at Beldaran’s wedding wasn’t a hallucination, but how was I supposed to know that? Try to be a little more understanding. It’ll make a better person of you.
And so Beldaran and Riva were married, and they were both deliriously happy. There were other things afoot in the world, however, and since the Alorn Kings were all on the Isle of the Winds anyway, Beldin suggested that we might want to seize the opportunity to discuss matters of state. All sorts of nonsense has been written about the origins of the Alorn Council, but that’s how it really started. The Tolnedrans have been objecting to this rather informal yearly gathering for centuries now - largely because they aren’t invited. Tolnedrans are a suspicious people, and any time they get word of a conference of any kind, they’re absolutely certain that there’s a plot against them at the bottom of it.
Polgara sat in on our conference. She didn’t particularly want to, right at first, but I insisted. I wasn’t going to give her an opportunity to wander about the citadel unsupervised.
I’m not sure that our impromptu conference really accomplished very much. We spent most of the time talking about the Angaraks. None of us were happy about their presence on this side of the Sea of the East, but for the moment there wasn’t much we could do about it. The distances were simply too great.
‘I could probably go into that forest to the east of the moors and burn down those cities the Nadraks are building there,’ Dras rumbled in that deep voice of his, ‘but there wouldn’t be much point to it. I don’t have the manpower to occupy all that wilderness. Sooner or later I’d have to pull out, and then the Nadraks would just come back out of the woods and rebuild.’
‘Have there been any contacts with them?’ Pol asked.
He shrugged. ‘A few skirmishes is about all. Every so often they come out of the mountains, and then we chase them back. I don’t think they’re very serious about it. They’re probably just testing our defenses.’
‘I meant peaceful contacts.’
‘There’s no such thing as peaceful contacts between Alorns and Angaraks, Polgara.’
‘Perhaps there should be.’
‘I think that’s against our religion.’
‘Maybe you should reconsider that. I understand that the Nadraks are merchants. They might be interested in trade.’
‘I don’t think they’ve got anything I’d want.’
‘Oh, yes they do, Dras. They’ve got information about the Murgos, and they’re t
he ones we’re really interested in. If anyone’s going to cause us trouble, it’ll be the Murgos. If we can find out from the Nadraks what they’re doing, we won’t have to go down to Rak Goska to investigate for ourselves.’
‘She’s got a point, Dras,’ Algar told his brother. ‘My people have had a few contacts with the Thulls, but you can’t get very much information out of a Thull. From what I hear, the Nadraks don’t care very much for the Murgos, so they probably wouldn’t mind passing information along.’
‘Can you actually climb the Eastern Escarpment to get to Mishrak ac Thull?’ Cherek asked him with a certain surprise.
‘There are some ravines that cut down through the escarpment, father,’ Algar replied. ‘They’re steep, but they’re passable. The Murgos patrol the western frontier of Mishrak ac Thull, and every so often one of those patrols comes down onto the plains of Algaria - usually to steal horses. We’d rather they didn’t do that, so we chase them back.’ He smiled faintly. ‘It’s easier to let them find those ravines for us than to go looking for them ourselves.’
‘There’s a thought,’ Dras noted. ‘If the Murgos want horses, couldn’t we interest them in trade, too?’
Algar shook his head. ‘Not Murgos, no. Their minds don’t work that way. One of my clan-chiefs questioned a Thull who actually knew his right hand from his left. The Thull said that Ctuchik’s at Rak Goska. As long as he’s dominating Murgo society, there won’t be any peaceful contacts with them.’
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