The Algars kept moving, and Kal Torak's generals and subordinate kings never knew where or when they'd strike next. It was almost as dangerous for them outside the walls as it was inside.
After a few days, I concluded that Cho-Ram's tactics were working out fine, and Pol and I said good-bye to Gelane, his mother, and the Algar Clan-Chiefs defending the fortress. And then we flew off to the west through the rainy, wind-swept gloom that seemed to have settled in perpetually. We had other things to attend to.
With Kal Torak effectively pinned down in Algaria, we had some time to expand and polish our plans. We moved our discussions from Riva to Tol Honeth so that we could take advantage of the expertise of the Imperial War College and the Tolnedran General Staff. I found working with professional soldiers to be something of a novelty. Despite their fearsome reputation, Alorns are at best only gifted amateurs, largely because their rank is hereditary. A man who's born a general doesn't have nearly the grasp of things a man who's worked his way up through the ranks has. Tolnedran officers work out contingency plans to deal with surprises. The customary Alorn approach to a battlefield emergency is simply to go berserk and kill everything in sight--including trees and bushes.
Although Ran Borune had by now tentatively--and very reluctantly --conceded that Pol and I might possibly have capabilities he wasn't prepared to admit actually existed, she and I remained largely in the background during those meetings. As I told the emperor,
"There's not much point in distracting your generals by telling them things they're not philosophically prepared to accept. If we announce that I'm sneaking up on my seven thousandth birthday, they'll spend so much time trying to prove that we're lying that they won't be able to pay attention to what they're supposed to be doing. Let's just tell them that Pol and I are Rivans and let it go at that."
The thing that baffled us the most was the fact that Urvon wasn't moving. He'd brought his army across the Sea of the East, right enough, but then he'd settled down in the Hagga Military District on the southern coast of Cthol Murgos as if he planned to put down roots. Finally I sent word to the twins that I needed to talk with Beldin face to face. You can only do so much at a distance.
My brother arrived a few days later and came to my room in the Cherek embassy. It wasn't a particularly large room, but I'm a plain sort of person, so I don't really need luxurious quarters. My first question to him was fairly simple.
"What's holding him up?"
"The Murgos," he replied.
"What else? That and the fact that he hasn't received his marching orders from Burnt-face yet."
"What's Ctuchik's problem?"
"He doesn't like Urvon."
"Who does? I don't think even Torak likes him very much. But Urvon's following orders, and Torak's likely to rip Ctuchik's heart out of his skinny chest if he interferes."
"You weren't listening, Belgarath," my stumpy brother told me.
"I
didn't say it was Ctuchik who was blocking Urvon. It's the Murgos--and somewhat more specifically, the Murgo Grolims."
"What's the difference? Ctuchik rules Cthol Murgos, doesn't he?"
"That he does, brother, but he's sort of looking the other way at the moment. Let's see if I can explain it. If Urvon reaches Arendia with his army, Torak's very likely to promote him to Most Favored Disciple, or whatever you want to call it. Ctuchik doesn't want that to happen, but he doesn't dare interfere--at least not overtly. That doesn't keep him from slipping around behind the scenes, though. He's spent centuries instilling an obsession with racial purity in the collective Murgo mind, and Malloreans aren't pure Angaraks. The average Mallorean's part Angarak, part Karand, part Melcene, with maybe a pinch of Dal thrown in for good measure. Murgos look on Malloreans as mongrels, and they don't hesitate to say so."
"Yes, I know all about that, but Murgos take their orders from the Grolims, and no Grolim alive is likely to do anything to offend Torak."
"You don't really know that much about Grolims, I see. Grolim politics are very involuted. No matter what Torak might think, there's a great schism in the Angarak religion, and it's based on the hatred that exists between Ctuchik and Urvon. Ctuchik dropped a few hints to his Grolims after Urvon landed in Hagga, and his priests have been spreading wild stories all over southern Cthol Murgos about drunken Mallorean soldiers breaking into Murgo houses and raping Murgo women. That's the sort of thing almost guaranteed to make a Murgo go up in flames. Ctuchik's official position is that he'll help Urvon's army in any way he can, but his Grolims are out there spreading atrocity stories for all they're worth. Murgo generals are very polite to Mallorean officers in the daytime--but every night disorganized mobs of common soldiers come out of their barracks and butcher every Mallorean they can lay their hands on. Ctuchik piously sits in Rak Cthol going
"Tsk, tsk, tsk," and pretends that he can't do anything about it, and all Urvon can do is squat in Rak Hagga wringing his hands while Murgo lynch mobs decimate his army. I 'know it's an unnatural thing to suggest, but in this particular situation, Ctuchik might turn out to be our most valuable ally."
"That'll all come to an end once Torak gives Urvon his marching orders, won't it?"
"I doubt it. Ctuchik's probably going to obediently order his southern Murgos to join Urvon's army, but all that'll do is give the Murgos an opportunity to get in close to the Malloreans--with knives. The trek across southern Cthol Murgos is likely to be very interesting, and Urvon'll be lucky if he's got a regiment left by the time he reaches the southern Tolnedran border."
"What an absolutely beautiful notion."
"I thought you might like it."
"Why don't I take you to the palace and introduce you to the Tolnedran generals so you can fill them in on this? Oh, incidentally, Pol and I haven't made an issue of who we really are. I'll just tell them that you're a Drasnian spy and let it go at that. Let's not upset the generals just yet."
He shrugged.
"If that's the way you want it," he agreed.
The officer commanding the Tolnedran general staff was named Cerran, and he was a member of the Anadile family in southern Tolnedra.
The Anadiles had never had sufficient land or power to aspire to the Imperial Throne, so they usually joined the army. They had traditionally been closely allied with the Borunes, so when the Borunes were on the throne, you would normally find an Anadile general in command of the military. General Cerran was a thoroughgoing professional in his early fifties. He was a Tolnedran, so he wasn't as tall as the Alorns, but he was a blocky sort of man with broad shoulders and large hands. He and Brand got along together very well.
I'm not really all that competent with the Drasnian secret language, but I managed to advise Pol and Rhodar that Beldin was posing as a member of Drasnian intelligence, and Rhodar greeted him warmly and introduced him as "one of our most valuable agents." Then Beldin repeated what he'd told me earlier.
"How long would you say it'll take Urvon to march across southern Cthol Murgos, Master Beldin?" General Cerran asked after my brother had finished his account.
Beldin shrugged.
"Half a year at least. He'll have to stop every so often to put down riots, I expect."
"That tells us one of the things we've needed to know, then. Your friend and his daughter told us that this Kal Torak of Mallorea has to be in Arendia on a certain date. As I understand it, it has something to do with the Angarak religion."
"I suppose you could put it that way, yes. So what?"
"We don't know what that date is, but Kal Torak does. He'll want Urvon in place when that date approaches, so as soon as Urvon starts marching, we'll know that we've got just about a year until we've got to be ready to meet the Angaraks somewhere in Arendia."
"That's a little imprecise, Cerran," Ran Borune objected.
"It's a lot more specific than anything we've been able to come up with so far, your Majesty," Cerran replied.
"King Cho-Ram assures us that his Stronghold's impregnable, so Kal Torak's
going to get more and more frustrated as the time for him to be in Arendia approaches. Eventually he'll be forced to break off his siege and march west. Angaraks take their religious obligations very seriously." Cerran rose from his chair and went to the large map hanging on the wall of the war room.
"An army the size of Kal Torak's won't move very fast," he noted, "particularly not once it gets up into the mountains of Ulgoland. It's a hundred and fifty leagues from the Stronghold to central Arendia. At ten miles a day, it'll take him forty-five days. Give him another fifteen days to regroup, and we're talking about two months. Our first signal will come when Urvon marches.
The second will be Kal Torak's abandonment of the siege of the Stronghold. That's all we really need, isn't it? The Murgos may or may not try to stop Urvon's Malloreans, but we definitely will. I rather think that General Urvon's going to be late getting to Arendia. Kal Torak's a foreigner, so he doesn't know all that much about the legions. I fully intend to educate him. I'll stop Urvon dead in his tracks at Tolnedra's southern border."
Now you see why Pol and I insisted that we coordinate our planning with the Tolnedran generals.
Once we knew that we'd have plenty of warning, we turned our attention to the campaign in Arendia. General Cerran's staff had carefully prepared plans for the defense of just about every location in the country. I'd spoken privately with Brand about that. Very few battles have ever been won from defensive positions. The methodical Tolnedrans, however, had compared Torak's numbers with ours and concluded that our taking the offensive without the legions to help us was absolutely out of the question, and the legions were going to be busy somewhere else.
The Tolnedran generals didn't know why the Alorn kings all deferred to Brand, but they weren't stupid. They recognized respect when they saw it, and after a few months of those ongoing strategy sessions, they also recognized Brand's tactical genius. Tolnedrans don't normally have much use for Alorns, but in Brand they could see an altogether different sort of man. His genius lay in his ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the various elements that were to be a part of the army that was going to face Kal Torak when the final battle took place.
Our decision not to tell the Tolnedran generals that we were basing a number of our decisions on the ravings of a madman was probably sound.
The least hint of mysticism in an associate makes a Tolnedran nervous.
There were times when we had to talk very fast, of course. We knew that certain things were going to happen, but we couldn't tell the Tolnedrans how we knew. Rhodar took care of most of that for us. The skills of the Drasnian Intelligence Service were already legendary, and after a couple of years, the generals had come to believe that there were Drasnian agents hidden in just about every element of the Angarak armies. Every time the inevitable
"How do you know that?" came up, Rhodar would look sly, take out a piece of paper, and lay it on the table with an insufferably smug expression. The implications were obvious.
Even Rhodar's cunning was strained to the limit when, after the siege of the Stronghold had plodded on for an interminable six years, the twins finally isolated the passage in the Mrin that told us where the battle was going to take place. The reference was obscure, but that's normal for the Mrin. All it really said was
"The Child of Light and the Child of Dark shall meet before the walls of the golden city." The key word in that passage is "golden." Those of you who've seen Vo Mimbre's yellow walls know where it comes from.
Anyway, we had to lead General Cerran and his colleagues rather gently until Cerran himself finally made the right decision. Rhodar, pretending to have received the information from his spies, laid out Torak's probable invasion route, and the rest of us found all sorts of things wrong with the other potential battle sites. Finally Cerran stabbed the map with one blunt finger.
"There," he said.
"You should prepare your forces to meet Kal Torak at Vo Mimbre."
"The ground around there looks to be all right, I guess," King Eldrig said, trying to sound a little dubious.
I stepped in at that point.
"Isn't it awfully flat?" I objected.
"Don't we want the advantage of high ground?"
"We don't really need it, Old One," Cho-Ram told me.
"The city itself is high enough to slow Kal Torak's army down. They'll come down the valley of the River Arend and take up positions around Vo Mimbre in preparation for another siege. Then we'll hit them from all sides and grind them up against the walls. General Cerran's right. It's the perfect place for the kind of battle we want."
Eldrig and I raised a few more feeble objections, then Brand and Rhodar sided with Cho-Ram, and that settled the matter. It was a cumbersome way to do business, but we really didn't have much choice.
Polgara came to my room in the Cherek embassy a few nights after we'd decided where we were going to meet Kal Torak, and she found me muttering swear words at my copy of the Mrin Codex.
"What is the matter with you, father?" she asked me.
"You've been as cross as a bear with a sore paw for the past week."
I slammed my fist down on the Mrin.
"This is what's the matter!" I yelled at her.
"It doesn't make any sense!"
"It's not supposed to. Wasn't that the whole idea? It's supposed to sound like gibberish. Why don't you tell me about your problem, father?
Maybe I can help."
I drew in a deep breath.
"All right. Brand's the Child of Light, isn't he--at least in this particular EVENT? If I'm reading this right, he'll have to be in several places at the same time."
"Read it to me, father," she said patiently.
"You don't make all that much sense when you start to splutter."
"All right, let's see what} you make of it." I unrolled the scroll, found the index mark, and read that cursed passage to her.
"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."
That clearly implies a paradox, doesn't it? And paradoxes just don't happen."
"I don't see it that way, father. How long does one of these EVENTS last?"
"As long as it takes, I suppose."
"Centuries, maybe? Years? Days? Or could it be just a few minutes, or perhaps even a single instant? How long did it take you to put Zedar to sleep in Morindland? That was one of these EVENTS, wasn't it? How long did it really take you, father?"
"Not too long, I guess. What are you driving at, Pol?"
"I get a strong feeling that the EVENTS are instantaneous. The Necessities are just too powerful for these confrontations to last for more than a few seconds at the very most. Any longer might rip the universe to pieces. The prophecies tell us what we have to do to get ready, and that can take eons, but the actual EVENT is something as simple as a decision --or even a single word.
"Yes," maybe, or
"No." The Mrin says that the final confrontation's going to be settled one way or the other by a choice, and choosing takes only an instant. I think that the last event's not the only one that's going to involve choice. I think they all are. When you met Zedar in Morindland, you chose not to kill him. I think that was the EVENT. Everything else was just preparation."
Now do you see what I mean about the subtlety of Polgara's mind? It might be pushing things a bit, but I chose to believe her explanation, and that turns that little conversation into an EVENT, doesn't it? It also implies that the EVENTS don't always involve face-to-face confrontations between the agents of the two Necessities. Now there's a concept almost guaranteed to give you a perpetual headache.
"I'm going to have to go to Riva," I told her.
"Oh? Why?"
"I have to pick up Iron-grip's sword. Brand's going to need it when the time comes. The Mrin says that the Orb's going to be the deciding factor, and that means the sword."
"Then you think the passage you read
to me means that you're going to be the Child of Light who's supposed to take the Orb to Brand?"
"It won't be the first time I've been saddled with it." I shrugged.
"If it turns out that I'm wrong, I won't even be able to get the sword off that wall. That's the nice thing about dealing with the Orb. It won't let you do something you're not supposed to do."
I decided not to make an issue of my little errand. No, it wasn't one of those choices Pol had been talking about. It was based entirely on a desire not to embarrass myself. If it turned out that I couldn't get the sword off the wall, I'd wind up looking a bit foolish if I'd been pompously announcing my intentions. Vanity's ridiculous, but we all fall prey to it from time to time.
I spoke with the Cherek ambassador and arranged to sail on the next courier ship to Riva. I suppose I could have gone there on my own, but if all went well, I'd be bringing something heavy with me when I came back.
It wasn't a pleasant voyage. I don't like Cherek war boats to begin with, and the foul weather that had plagued us for all those years didn't make things any better.
We tied up to the wharf at Riva, and I climbed up those steep, dripping stairs to the Citadel.
Brand's eldest son Rennig was in charge during his father's absence. The position of the Rivan Warder was not, strictly speaking, hereditary, but I was fairly certain that this time it would be passed on to Rennig. He was as solid and dependable as his father.
He was a bit wild-eyed when I was admitted into Brand's study, though.
"Thank the Gods!" he said, rising to his feet.
"You got my message!"
"What message?"
"You mean you didn't? Why did you come, then?"
"I've got something to attend to. What's happening, Rennig? I haven't seen you this excited since you were a little boy."
"You'd better come and see for yourself, Ancient One. I don't think you'd believe me if I told you. I'll send for the guards who saw it happen. I'm sure you'll want to talk with them." He led me out into the corridor, and we went to the Hall of the Rivan King. That hall, the throne room, hadn't been used much during the centuries since Gorek's assassination, and it was damp and musty and not very well lighted. Rennig took a torch from one of the rings set in the wall just outside the door, and we went inside, marching down past the fire pits to the throne. As we drew nearer, I could see Iron-grip's sword hanging point down on the wall, but I could also see that there was something terribly wrong with it. My Master's Orb was not on the pommel.
Rivan Codex Series Page 58
