Thus, if a large rock happened to intrude itself in the path of one of his fences, he immediately stopped being a fence builder and became an excavator.
Polgara immersed herself in domesticity. The interior of her cottage was immaculate. Her doorstep was not merely swept but frequently scrubbed. The rows of beans, turnips, and cabbages in her garden were as straight as any of Durnik's fences, and weeds were absolutely forbidden. Her expression as she toiled at these seemingly endless tasks was one of dreamy contentment, and she hummed or sang very old songs as she worked.
The boy, Errand, however, tended on occasion toward vagrancy. This was not to say that he was indolent, but many of the chores around a rural farmstead were tedious, involving repeating the same series of actions over and over again. Stacking firewood was not one of Errand's favorite pastimes. Weeding the garden seemed somehow futile, since the weeds grew back overnight. Drying the dishes seemed an act of utter folly, since, left alone, the dishes would dry themselves without any assistance whatsoever. He made some effort to sway Polgara to his point of view in this particular matter. She listened gravely to his impeccable logic, nodding her agreement as he demonstrated with all the eloquence at his command that the dishes did not really need to be dried. And when he had finished, summing up all his arguments with a dazzling display of sheer brilliance, she smiled and said, "Yes, dear," and implacably handed him the dishtowel.
Errand was hardly overburdened with unremitting toil, however. In point of fact, not a day went by when he did not spend several hours on the back of the chestnut stallion, roaming the grasslands surrounding the cottage as freely as the wind.
Beyond the timeless, golden doze of the Vale, the world moved on. Although the cottage was remote, visitors were not uncommon. Hettar, of course, rode by often and sometimes he was accompanied by Adara, his tall, lovely wife, and their infant son. Like her husband, Adara was an Algar to her fingertips, as much at home in the saddle as she was on her feet. Errand was very fond of her. Though her face always seemed serious, even grave, there lurked just beneath that calm exterior an ironic, penetrating wit that absolutely delighted him. It was more than that, however. The tall, dark-haired girl, with her flawless features and alabaster skin, carried about her a light, delicate fragrance that always seemed to tug at the outer edges of his consciousness. There was something elusive yet strangely compelling about that scent. Once, when Polgara was playing with the baby, Adara rode with Errand to the top of a nearby hill and there she told him about how the perfume she wore originated.
"You did know that Garion is my cousin?" she asked him.
"Yes."
"We had ridden out from the Stronghold once -it was in the winter when everything was locked in frost. The grass was brown and lifeless, and all the leaves had fallen from the bushes. I asked him about sorcery -what it was and what he could do with it. I didn't really believe in sorcery -I wanted to, but I just couldn't bring myself to believe. He took up a twig and wrapped some dry grass around it; then he turned it into a flower right in front of my eyes."
Errand nodded. "Yes, that's the kind of thing Garion would do. Did it help you to believe?"
She smiled. "Not right away -at least not altogether. There was something else I wanted him to do, but he said that he couldn't."
"What was that?"
She blushed rosily and then laughed. "It still embarrasses me," she said. "I wanted him to use his power to make Hettar love me."
"But he didn't have to do that," Errand said, "Hettar loved you already, didn't he?"
"Well -he needed a little help to make him realize it. But I was feeling very sorry for myself that day. When we rode back to the Stronghold, I forgot the flower and left it behind on the sheltered side of a hill. A year or so later, the whole hillside was covered with low bushes and these beautiful little lavender flowers. Ce'Nedra calls the flower 'Adara's rose,' and Ariana thought it might have some medicinal value, even though we've never been able to find anything it cures. I like the fragrance of the flower, and it is mine in a sort of special way, so I sprinkle petals in the chests where I keep my clothes." She laughed a wicked sort of little laugh. "It makes Hettar very affectionate," she added.
"I don't think that's entirely caused by the flower," Errand said.
"Perhaps, but I'm not going to take any chances with that. If the scent gives me an advantage, I'm certainly going to use it."
"That makes sense, I suppose."
"Oh, Errand," she laughed, "you're an absolutely delightful boy."
The visits of Hettar and Adara were not entirely social in nature. Hettar's father was King Cho-Hag, Chief of the Clan-Chiefs of Algaria, and Cho-Hag, the nearest of the Alorn monarchs, felt that it was his responsibility to keep Polgara advised of the events which were taking place in the world beyond the boundaries of the Vale. From time to time he sent reports of the progress of the bloody, endless war in southern Cthol Murgos, where Kal Zakath, emperor of Mallorea, continued his implacable march across the plains of Hagga and into the great southern forest in Gorut. The Kings of the West were at a loss to explain Zakath's seemingly unreasoning hatred of his Murgo cousins. There were rumors of a personal affront at some time in the past, but that had involved Taur Urgas, and Taur Urgas had died at the Battle of Thall Mardu. Zakath's enmity for the Murgos, however, had not died with the madman who ruled them, and he now led his Malloreans in a savage campaign evidently designed to exterminate all of Murgodom and to erase from human memory all traces of the fact that the Murgos had ever even existed.
In Tolnedra, Emperor Ran Borune XXIII, the father of Queen Ce'Nedra of Riva, was in failing health; and because he had no son to succeed him on the Imperial Throne at Tol Honeth, the great families of the Empire were engaged in a vicious struggle over the succession. Enormous bribes changed hands, and assassins crept through the streets of Tol Honeth by night with sharpened daggers and vials of those deadly poisons purchased in secret from the snake people of Nyissa. The wily Ran Borune, however, much to the chagrin and outrage of the Honeths, the Vordues, and the Horbites, had appointed General Varana, the Duke of Anadile, as his regent; and Varana, whose control of the legions was very nearly absolute, took firm steps to curb the excesses of the great houses in their scramble for the throne.
The internecine wars of the Angaraks and the only slightly less savage struggles of the Grand Dukes of the Tolnedran Empire, however, were of only passing interest to the Alorn Kings. The monarchs of the north were far more concerned with the troublesome resurgence of the Bear-cult and with the sad but undeniable fact that King Rhodar of Drasnia was quite obviously declining rapidly. Rhodar, despite his vast bulk, had demonstrated an astonishing military genius during the campaign which had culminated in the Battle of Thull Mardu, but Cho-Hag sadly reported that the corpulent Drasnian monarch had grown forgetful and in some ways even childish in the past few years. Because of his huge weight, he could no longer stand unaided and he frequently fell asleep, even during the most important state functions. His lovely young queen, Porenn, did as much as she possibly could to relieve the burdens imposed upon him by his crown, but it was quite obvious to all who knew him that King Rhodar would be unable to reign much longer.
At last, toward the end of a severe winter that had locked the north in snow and ice deeper than anyone could remember, Queen Porenn sent a messenger to the Vale to entreat Polgara to come to Boktor to try her healing arts on the Drasnian king. The messenger arrived late one bitter afternoon as the wan sun sank almost wearily into a bed of purple cloud lying heavy over the mountains of Ulgo. He was thickly wrapped in rich sable fur, but his long, pointed nose protruded from the warm interior of his deep cowl and immediately identified him.
"Silk!" Durnik exclaimed as the little Drasnian dismounted in the snowy dooryard. "What are you doing all the way down here?"
"Freezing, actually." Silk replied. "I hope you've got a good fire going."
"Pol, look who's here," Durnik called, and Polgara opened the door to look ou
t at their visitor.
"Well, Prince Kheldar," she said, smiling at the rat-faced little man, "have you so completely plundered Gar og Nadrak that you've come in search of a new theater for your depredations?"
"No," Silk told her, stamping his half-frozen feet on the ground. "I made the mistake of passing through Boktor on my way to Val Alorn. Porenn dragooned me into making a side trip."
"Go inside," Durnik told him. "I'll tend to your horse."
After Silk had removed his sable cloak, he stood shivering in front of the arched fireplace with his hands extended toward the flames. "I've been cold for the last week," he grumbled. "Where's Belgarath?"
"He and Beldin are off in the East somewhere," Polgara replied, mixing the half-frozen man a cup of spiced wine to help warm him.
"No matter, I suppose. Actually I came to see you. You've heard that my uncle isn't well?"
She nodded, picking up a glowing-hot poker and plunging it into the wine with a bubbling hiss. "Hettar brought us some news about that last fall. Have his physicians put a name to his illness yet?"
"Old age." Silk shrugged, gratefully taking the cup from her.
"Rhodar isn't really that old."
"He's carrying a lot of extra weight. That tires a man out after a while. Porenn is desperate. She sent me to ask you -no, to beg you- to come to Boktor and see what you can do. She says to tell you that Rhodar won't see the geese come north if you don't come."
"Is it really that bad?"
"I'm not a physician," Silk replied, "but he doesn't look very good, and his mind seems to be slipping. He's even starting to lose his appetite, and that's a bad sign in a man who always ate seven big meals a day."
"Of course we'll come," Polgara said quickly.
"Just let me get warm first," Silk said in a plaintive tone.
They were delayed for several days just south of Aldurford by a savage blizzard that swept out of the mountains of Sendaria to howl across the open plains of northern Algaria. As luck had it, they reached the encampment of a nomadic band of roving herdsmen just as the storm broke and sat out the days of shrieking wind and driving snow in the comfortable wagons of the hospitable Algars. When the weather cleared at last, they pressed on to Aldurford, crossed the river, and reached the broad causeway that stretched across the snowchoked fens to Boktor.
Queen Porenn, still lovely despite the dark circles under her eyes that spoke so eloquently of her sleepless concern, greeted them at the gates of King Rhodar's palace. "Oh, Polgara," she said, overwhelmed with gratitude and relief as she embraced the sorceress.
"Dear Porenn," Polgara said, enfolding the careworn little Drasnian queen in her arms. "We'd have been here sooner, but we encountered bad weather. How's Rhodar?"
"A little weaker every day," Porenn replied with a kind of hopelessness in her voice. "Even Kheva tires him now."
"Your son?"
Porenn nodded. "The next king of Drasnia. He's only six -much too young to ascend the throne."
"Well, let's see what we can do to delay that."
King Rhodar, however, looked even worse than Silk's assessment of his condition had led them to believe. Errand remembered the King of Drasnia as a fat, jolly man with a quick wit and seemingly inexhaustible energy. Now he was listless, and his gray-hued skin hung on him in folds. He could not rise; perhaps even more serious was the fact that he could not lie down without his breath coming in painful, choking gasps. His voice, which had once been powerful enough to wake a sleeping army, had become a puny, querulous wheeze. He smiled a tired little smile of greeting when they entered, but after only a few minutes of conversation, he dozed off again.
"I think I need to be alone with him," Polgara told the rest of them in a crisp, efficient voice, but the quick look she exchanged with Silk carried little hope for the ailing monarch's recovery.
When she emerged from Rhodar's room, her expression was grave.
"Well?" Porenn asked, her eyes fearful.
"I'll speak frankly," Polgara said. "We've known each other too long for me to hide the truth from you. I can make his breathing a bit easier and relieve some of his discomfort. There are some things that will make him more alert -for short periods of time- but we have to use those sparingly, probably only when there are some major decisions to be made."
"But you cannot cure him." Porenn's quiet voice hovered on the very edge of tears.
"It's not a condition that's subject to cure, Porenn. His body is just worn out. I've told him for years that he was eating himself to death. He's as heavy as three normal men. A man's heart was simply not designed to carry that kind of weight. He hasn't had any real exercise in the past several years, and his diet is absolutely the worst he could possibly have come up with."
"Could you use sorcery?" the Drasnian queen asked desperately .
"Porenn, I'd have to rebuild him from the ground up. Nothing he has really functions right any more. Sorcery simply wouldn't work. I'm sorry."
Two great tears welled up in Queen Porenn's eyes. "How long?" she asked in a voice scarcely more than a whisper.
" A few months -six at the most."
Porenn nodded, and then, despite her tear-filled eyes, she lifted her chin bravely. "When you think he's strong enough, I'd like to have you give him those potions that will clear his mind. He and I will have to talk. There are arrangements that are going to have to be made -for the sake of our son, and for Drasnia."
"Of course, Porenn."
The bitter cold of that long, cruel winter broke quite suddenly a couple of days later. A warm wind blew in off the Gulf of Cherek during the night, bringing with it a gusty rainstorm that turned the drifts clogging the broad avenues of Boktor into sodden brown slush. Errand and Prince Kheva, the heir to the Drasnian throne, found themselves confined to the palace by the sudden change in the weather. Crown Prince Kheva was a sturdy little boy with dark hair and a serious expression. Like his father, the ailing King Rhodar, Kheva had a marked preference for the color red and he customarily wore a velvet doublet and hose in that hue.
Though Errand was perhaps five years or so older than the prince, the two of them became friends almost immediately. Together they discovered the enormous entertainment to be found in rolling a brightly colored wooden ball down along flight of stone stairs. After the bouncing ball knocked a silver tray from the hands of the chief butler, however, they were asked quite firmly to find other amusements.
They wandered for a time through the echoing marble halls of the palace, Kheva in his bright red velvet and Errand in sturdy peasant brown, until they came at last to the grand ballroom. At one end of the enormous hall, a broad marble staircase with a crimson carpet down the center descended from the upper floors of the palace, and along each side of that imposing stair was a smooth marble balustrade. The two boys looked speculatively at those twin banisters, both of them immediately recognizing the tremendous potential of all that slippery marble. There were polished chairs along each side of the ballroom, and each chair was padded with a red velvet cushion. The boys looked at the balustrades. Then they looked at the cushions. Then they both turned to be sure that no guard or palace functionary was in the vicinity of the large, double doors at the back of the ballroom.
Errand prudently closed the doors; then he and Prince Kheva went to work. There were many chairs and many red velvet cushions. When those cushions were all piled in two heaps at the bottom of the marble stair railings, they made a pair of quite imposing mountains.
"Well?" Kheva said when all was in readiness.
"I guess we might as well," Errand replied.
Together they climbed the stairs and then each of them mounted one of the smooth, cool banisters descending grandly toward the white marble floor of the ballroom far below.
"Go!" Kheva shouted, and the two of them slid down, gaining tremendous speed as they went and landing with soft thumps in the heaps of cushions awaiting them.
Laughing with delight, the two boys ran back up the stairs again and once ag
ain they slid down. All in all, the afternoon went very well, until at last one of the cushions burst its seams and filled the quiet air of the grand ballroom with softly drifting goose down. It was, quite naturally, at that precise moment that Polgara came looking for them. Somehow it always happened that way. The moment anything was broken, spilled, or tipped over, someone in authority would appear. There was never an opportunity to tidy up, and so such situations always presented themselves in the worst possible light.
The double doors at the far end of the ballroom opened, and Polgara, regally beautiful in blue velvet, stepped inside.
Her face was grave as she regarded the guilty-looking pair lying at the foot of the stairs in their piles of cushions, with a positive blizzard of goose down swirling around them.
Errand winced and held his breath.
Very softly, she closed the doors behind her and walked slowly toward them, her heels sounding ominously loud on the marble floor. She looked at the denuded chairs lining each side of the ballroom. She looked at the marble balustrades. She looked at the boys with feathers settling on them. And then, without warning whatsoever, she began to laugh, a rich, warm, vibrant laugh that absolutely filled the empty hall.
Errand felt somehow betrayed by her reaction. He and Kheva had gone out of their way to get themselves into trouble, and all she did was laugh about it. There was no scolding, no acid commentary, nothing but laughter. He definitely felt that this levity was out of place, an indication that she was not taking this thing as seriously as she ought. He felt a trifle bitter about the whole thing. He had earned the scolding she was denying him.
"You boys will clean it up, won't you?" she asked them.
"Of course, Lady Polgara," Kheva assured her quickly.' "We were just about to do that."
"Splendid, your Highness," she said, the corners of her mouth still twitching. "Do try to gather up all the feathers." And she turned and walked out of the ballroom, leaving the faint echo of her laughter hovering in the air behind her.
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