Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  ‘That’s just a polite way of saying “bully”, Asrana,’ I told her. ‘I’m very good at bullying people. Over the years I’ve noticed that rulers who’re on shaky ground at home almost always start a war with some neighbor on the theory that an outside war will redirect all those pent-up hatreds. I’ll strongly urge the eventual ruler of Asturia not to do that – and I can be very persuasive when I set my mind to it. I’ve devoted a great deal of time and effort to the establishment of peace in Arendia, and I’m not going to let some Asturian who thinks he’s come up with an entirely new idea disrupt that peace just to consolidate his position at home. We can all hope that the ultimate winner in Asturia will be reasonable. If he’s not, I’ll grind his face in reasonableness until he gets my point.’ I looked around sternly. ‘Have I made myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, mother,’ Kathandrion replied with feigned meekness.

  Corrolin burst out laughing at that, and the conference moved on to its conclusion with a good-humored tone. I’d probably overstated things, but these were Arends, after all. The alliance between Kathandrion and Corrolin was firmly in place when we separated. That was the important thing. Now, no amount of Asturian conniving was likely to disrupt it.

  Kathandrion and I returned to Vo Wacune, and he moved his forces up to the eastern border of Asturia, while Corrolin blockaded the southern edge of that troubled duchy. Asturia was sealed off now, and ‘the nephew war’ was strictly confined. Emissaries from both Nerasin and Olburton scurried around making ridiculous offers in both Vo Wacune and Vo Mimbre, but Kathandrion and Corrolin steadfastly refused to even see them.

  I had a few concerns about Asrana and what she might do. She still had many contacts in Asturia, and she could, if she chose to do so, greatly influence the course of events there. I knew that she held Olburton in contempt, but she absolutely despised Nerasin. Given a choice between them, she’d probably – with reluctance – come down on Olburton’s side. I wanted a continuing stalemate in Asturia, so I strongly urged my enthusiastic friend to keep her nose out of things there.

  All this scheming and intrigue was beginning to make me tired. A good juggler can keep a dozen brightly colored balls in the air all at the same time – as long as the balls aren’t slippery. My problem was that some knave had greased all the balls I was trying to juggle.

  The year 2325 wound on down toward the annual feast-day called Erastide that marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next. There was the usual party at the ducal palace in Vo Wacune, and the highlight of the whole affair was the announcement by Crown Prince Alleran that his wife, Mayaserell, was with child. All in all, I approved of that. At least there wasn’t going to be a messy argument about succession in the Duchy of Wacune.

  The following spring the messiness in Asturia was climaxed by a phenomenal bow-shot of at least two hundred paces. Since the arrow involved ended up protruding from the center of Olburton’s chest, things in Asturia suddenly got very noisy. Olburton had controlled the cities, while Nerasin had held sway out in the more conservative countryside. In effect, Olburton had owned the people and Nerasin the land. There’d been a kind of balance, which I’d striven to maintain, but with Olburton’s death that stalemate went out the window. Nerasin did not immediately attack Vo Astur, but concentrated instead on capturing the smaller cities and towns. By the early summer of 2326, Vo Astur was an island in the middle of a hostile sea, and its situation was made all the more precarious by the petty squabbling of Olburton’s relatives. The ultimate outcome was fairly predictable. By early autumn, Nerasin had reclaimed his drunken uncle’s throne in Vo Astur.

  And that was when Asrana stepped in, muddying the waters for all she was worth. I’m not sure exactly where she found the phrase, but the idea of ‘destabilizing the government of Asturia’ absolutely fascinated her, and she had plenty of contacts back home to assist her.

  It was several months before word of Asrana’s activities reached me in Vo Wacune, and as soon as I heard of them, I sent Killane out to shop around town for a large mirror – ’the largest you can find’. I wasn’t really all that curious about my own reflection. I knew what I looked like, after all. Killane’s shopping expedition was a ruse designed to get him out of the house long enough for me to slip away from him. I did not want an escort this time. I gave him a quarter of an hour to immerse himself in the cabinet shops in the commercial district of Vo Wacune, and then I retired to my rose-garden, stepped out of sight behind a hedge, and went falcon. I wanted to reach Vo Mandor before Asrana could come up with any more mischief.

  Evening was settling on the battlements of Mandorin’s castle when I arrived, winging my way out of the northeast. I settled on the parapet, sent out a quick, searching thought to locate Asrana, and then changed back. I was irritated, but not really in that state melodramatically called ‘high dudgeon’. I suppose that ‘medium dudgeon’ would have been more apt. Fortunately, Asrana was alone, dreamily brushing her hair, when I burst in on her.

  ‘Polly!’ she exclaimed, dropping her hair brush. ‘You startled me.’

  ‘I’m going to do worse than that in a minute, Asrana. What on earth do you think you’re doing in Asturia?’

  Her eyes hardened. ‘I’m keeping Nerasin off balance, that’s all. Believe me, Polly, I know exactly what I’m doing. Right now, Nerasin’s afraid to turn his back on anybody in his court, and I have it on the best authority that he never sleeps in the same bed for two nights in a row. I’ve spun imaginary plots in his palace like cobwebs. He’s afraid to close his eyes.’

  ‘I want you to stop it at once.’

  ‘No, Polly,’ she replied coolly. ‘I don’t think so. I’m Asturian myself, and I know the Asturian mind far better than you do. Nerasin’s only interested in his own precious skin, so he’ll ignore the alliance between Wacune and Mimbre if he thinks a war will cement his grip on power. He won’t care a jot if that war kills half the men in Asturia. All I’m doing is keeping him so busy protecting his own life that he doesn’t have time to start that war.’

  ‘Asrana, he'll eventually realize that all these imaginary plots are just a ruse, and then he’ll ignore them.’

  ‘I certainly hope so,’ she said, ‘because that’s when the plots will stop being imaginary. I am going to kill him, Polly. Look upon it as my gift to you.’

  ‘To me?’ That startled me.

  ‘Of course. You’re the one who shoved peace down all our throats, aren’t you? As long as Nerasin’s in power in Vo Astur, this peace of yours is in danger. I’m going to see to it that he doesn’t stay in power for much longer. Once he’s gone, we’ll all be able to breathe much more easily.’

  ‘Whoever replaces him will probably be just as bad, Asrana.’ I had regressed to ‘low dudgeon’ by now.

  ‘Well, if he is, the same thing that’s going to happen to Nerasin will happen to him. I’ll sift my way through the whole body of Asturian nobility until I find somebody we can live with, and if I can’t find a reasonable noble, I’ll promote a townsman – or even a serf, if I have to.’

  ‘You’re very serious about this, aren’t you, Asrana?’ When I’d first heard about her games, I’d thought she was just playing.

  ‘Dead serious, Polly.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Before you came to Vo Astur, I was just a silly little ornament in Oldoran’s court. You changed all that. You should always be careful when you start throwing words like “patriotism” around in the presence of Arends, you know. We tend to take things too seriously. These past few years of peace have been better for Arendia than anything that’s happened to us for the last six or eight centuries. People here are actually dying of old age now. I’ll depopulate Asturia if that’s what it takes to keep what’s coming to be known as “Polgara’s Peace” from disintegrating.’

  ‘Polgara’s Peace?’ That really startled me.

  ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t any of our doing. It’s all your fault, Polly. If you hadn’t waved peace in front of our faces, none of us would have known what it l
ooks like.’

  When I calmed down and looked at things from her perspective, I could see that she had a point, and, moreover, that her extensive contacts in Vo Astur made her the best qualified of all of us to keep Nerasin so thoroughly off balance that he’d never have time to cause trouble in the rest of Arendia. I chided her for not keeping me advised, extracted a promise from her that she wouldn’t do anything major without consulting me first, and then I went back to Vo Wacune, coming down inside the grounds of the palace instead of my own rose-garden. I spoke with Kathandrion at some length about Asrana’s activities and asked him to keep Corrolin advised. Then I went on home to give Killane the chance to scold me.

  It was in the autumn of 2326 that I helped Alleran’s wife, Mayaserell, through a difficult labor and finally delivered her of a son, who was named after his grandfather – a fairly common practice. Kathandrion was so proud of it, though, that he nearly exploded.

  The borders of Asturia, both to the east and to the south, remained sealed – which is to say that no one could conveniently march an army across the lines, but nobody can totally seal a border that runs through a thick forest. Asrana’s messengers and fellow-plotters had little trouble crossing that line, and I’m sure that Nerasin’s people could also slip across. Vo Astur continued to bubble like a teapot that’s been left over the fire too long.

  It was on a blustery day in the early spring of 2327 that something happened which I have very good reason to remember. There’d been a certain parity of heavy weaponry among the three Arendish duchies, which is to say that the siege engines of an attacking force couldn’t throw boulders, burning pitch, or baskets full of javelins any farther than the engines of a defending force could. The defenders of a city or fort had walls to hide behind, however, while the attackers did not, and this put the attacking force at a definite disadvantage. Large amounts of money and a great deal of engineering talent were devoted to the improvement of those engines of war, since the extension of the range of a catapult by a mere fifty paces could determine the outcome of a battle.

  Kathandrion’s engineers had designed a very large catapult that was based on some highly questionable theories involving pulleys, counterweights, and reciprocal tensions. Frankly, that monstrosity looked like the frame of a large house enveloped in cobwebs to me. Kathandrion was very enthusiastic about it, however, and he hovered over the shop where it was being constructed like a mother hen, and he spent his evenings deeply immersed in the engineers’ drawings. I glanced at them a few times myself, and it seemed that there was something wrong with the concept, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  In time, the monstrosity was completed, and the engineers rolled it out into a nearby meadow to find out if it could really work. Kathandrion himself pulled off his doublet to lend a hand – or in this case, a shoulder – to the task of moving the huge thing into position. Then he bent his back to the cranking of one of the many windlasses that tightened the tangle of ropes to bowstring tautness. The entire court gathered some distance off to one side to watch the Duke of Wacune pull the lanyard that was designed to release all that pent-up force.

  I was there as well, and just as all was in readiness, I had a sudden premonition. There was something wrong! ‘Kathandrion!’ I shouted. ‘No!’

  But it was too late. The boyishly grinning Duke Kathandrion jerked the lanyard.

  And the entire framework exploded into a jumbled mass of snarled rope and splintered timbers! The computations of the engineers had been perfect. Unfortunately, they had not computed the strength of the wooden timbers that formed the frame. The sudden release of all that pent-up energy shattered those heavy beams, spraying the crew surrounding the engine with yard-long splinters that spun out faster than any arrow shot from a bow.

  Duke Kathandrion of Wacune, my dear, dear friend, died instantly when a sharp-pointed chunk of wood thicker than his arm drove completely through his head.

  All of Wacune went into deep mourning, but after about a week I put aside my own grief and went to the palace to speak with Alleran. His eyes were puffy from weeping as he stood at the table in his father’s study staring at those fatal drawings. ‘It should have worked, Aunt Pol!’ he said in an anguished voice. ‘What went wrong? Everything was put together exactly according to these plans.’

  ‘It was the plans that were at the heart of the problem, your Grace,’ I told him.

  ‘Your Grace?’

  ‘You’re the Duke of Wacune now, my Lord, so you’d better pull yourself together. Even in time of grief, events move on. With your permission, I’ll make the necessary arrangements for your coronation. Pull yourself together, Alleran. Wacune needs you now.’

  ‘I’m not ready for this, Aunt Pol,’ he protested.

  ‘It’s either you or your son, Alleran, and he’s a lot less ready than you are. That festering sore called Asturia is on your western border, and Nerasin will jump on any perceived weakness. It’s your duty, your Grace. Don’t let us down’

  ‘If I could just figure out why this cursed thing flew all apart the way it did!’ he burst out, slamming his fist down on the drawings. ‘I’ve gone over all the arithmetic myself. It should have worked.’

  ‘It did, Alleran. It did exactly what that design called for it to do. The only problem with the arithmetic was that the computations concerning the strength of the structural beams were left out. The catapult didn’t work because it was too powerful. The frame should have been made of steel instead of wooden beams. The pressures were too great to be contained by a wooden frame. That’s why it tore itself apart.’

  That much steel would have been very expensive, Aunt Pol.’

  ‘I think the wood was even more expensive, your Grace. Fold those drawings up and put them away. We have a great deal to do.’

  Alleran’s coronation was subdued, but Corrolin traveled up from Vo Mimbre to attend, so that put a bit of iron in the back of the new Duke of Wacune. I sat in on their private discussions, but it probably wasn’t really necessary. Kathandrion had been wise enough not to raise his heir in a political vacuum, and the Mimbrate emissary to the court at Vo Wacune had given Alleran instruction in the somewhat overly-involved courtesies of the Mimbrates. Their first meetings were a bit stiff, but as they came to know each other better, they started to relax. Their major concern was still Asturia, and that naturally drew them closer together.

  It was in the autumn of that same year that Nerasin did something that pushed me very close to the line my father had repeatedly warned me not to cross.

  Asrana and Mandorin were riding down to Vo Mimbre for what was probably only a social visit, and when they reached that band of trees that lines the River Arend and started upstream toward Vo Mimbre, a number of Asturian archers, who’d somehow managed to sneak down across the plains of Mimbre to the southern border, quite literally riddled my two dear friends with arrows. Nerasin had obviously discovered that Asrana’d been behind all the troubles he’d been having in Vo Astur, and so he’d taken some fairly typical Arendish steps.

  When I heard about the deaths of my friends, I was very nearly overcome with grief. I wept for days and then steeled myself for revenge. I was quite certain that I could devise some things to do to Nerasin that would make strong men shudder in horror for several thousand years. Killane and his family wisely stayed clear of me when I came storming out of my room. My first stop was the kitchen. I was going to need some sharp implements to carry out my plans for Nerasin. My training as a cook gave me some interesting terms to work with. ‘Filleting’ had a nice sound to it, I thought, and so did ‘de-boning’. The idea of cutting out Nerasin’s bones one by one very slowly had an enormous appeal for some reason. My eyes brightened when I came across a cheese-grater.

  ‘All right, Polgara, put the tools back where you got them. You’re not going anywhere.’ It was mother’s voice.

  ‘He murdered my friends, mother!’ I burst out. ‘I’m not going to let him get away with that!’

  ‘I se
e that you’re becoming very adept at following local customs,’ she noted, and there was a faint touch of rebuke in her voice.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Why did the Master send you to Arendia?’

  ‘To put a stop to all their foolishness.’

  ‘Oh, now I understand. You’re going to wallow in that same foolishness so that you can see what it’s like. Interesting idea. Did you take the same approach in your study of medicine? Did you catch a disease so that you’d understand it better before you tried to cure it?’

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘Yes, I know. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you, Polgara. All this brooding about knives and meat-hooks and cheese-graters is exactly what you were sent to Arendia to put a stop to. Nerasin murdered your friends, so now you’re going to murder him. Then one of his relatives will murder you. Then your father will murder somebody else in Nerasin’s family. Then somebody will murder your father. Then Beldin will murder somebody else. And it will go on and on and on until nobody’s even able to remember who Asrana and Mandorin were. That’s what blood feuds are all about, Pol. Congratulations. You’re an Arend to your fingertips, now.’

  ‘But I loved them, mother!’

  ‘It’s a noble emotion, but wading in blood isn’t the best way to express it.’

  That’s when I started to weep again.

  ‘I’m glad we had a chance to have this little chat, Pol,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Oh, incidentally, you’re going to need Nerasin a little later, so killing him and chopping him up for stew-meat wouldn’t really be appropriate. Be well, Polgara.’ And then she was gone.

  I sighed and put all the kitchen implements back where I’d found them.

  The funeral of Asrana and Mandorin was held at Vo Mandor in the autumn of 2327, and Alleran and I, quite naturally, attended. The Arendish religion isn’t good at funerals. Chaldan’s a warrior God, and his priests are far more interested in vengeance than in comforting survivors. Perhaps I’m being a little picky, but it seems to me that a funeral sermon based on the theme, ‘I’ll get even with you for that, you dirty rascal’ lacks a dignified, elegiac tone.