‘One of them, I suppose. I think there’ll be others as well.’
‘One’s enough for right now. I wouldn’t want to seem greedy. This is the one we’ve been expecting since the days of Bear-shoulders, so that’s good enough for me.’
‘Talk to me about how lucky you are after the war, Eldrig. The last one wasn’t too pleasant, as I recall. Start getting your people ready, and dip into your treasury so that you can hire ship-builders. I might need more war-boats.’
He winced. ‘Maybe I can float a loan from Ran Borune.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it, and you wouldn’t care for his interest rates. Get started, Eldrig. I’ll be in touch.’
I left Val Alorn and flew southeast to Aldurford in northern Algaria to talk with Polgara. Her house was near the ford itself, so I strolled on down through the town to the river. With the exception of the Stronghold, Aldurford is just about the only town in Algaria, and it shows. Algars have a rather haphazard idea about what a town ought to look like. The notion of regular streets hasn’t really caught on, and the citizens of Aldurford have built their houses wherever it suited them. It makes finding your way around a bit challenging.
Eventually, I located Pol’s house and knocked on the door. She opened it almost immediately. As usual, she was dressed all in blue, and she greeted me in her usual gracious fashion. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve been expecting you for two weeks now.’
‘I had to go talk with some Alorns.’ I looked past her into her kitchen. There was a boy of about eleven sitting at the table. It wasn’t hard to recognize him, since all of Iron-grip’s descendants have looked much the same. He had sandy-colored hair and that same serious expression they’ve all had. There was an Algar woman with long dark hair shelling peas at the table with him. I was never certain just how much Pol had told the various heirs she raised, so I thought it might be best if she and I spoke privately. ‘Let’s take a little walk, Pol,’ I suggested. ‘We’ve got some fairly important decisions to make.’
She glanced over her shoulder, nodded, fetched a shawl, and came outside.
‘What happened to his father?’
‘He died,’ she replied shortly, and that same old sorrow was in her voice.
‘What’s the boy’s name?’
‘Garel’s the heir?’
‘Obviously.’
I could see that she didn’t want to talk, so we walked on in silence. We went along the riverbank until we were well beyond the last of the houses. The perpetual clouds that had obscured the sky for months had broken for a brief period, and it was actually sunny. A breeze was rippling the surface of the water. I looked out across the broad river and had one of those peculiar little shocks of recognition. I was almost positive that it had been on the far bank that the funny old man in the rickety cart had given me instructions about the break-up of Aloria after Cherek and the boys and I had returned from Cthol Mishrak about twenty-nine centuries back.
‘What’s the matter?’ Pol asked curiously.
I shrugged. ‘Nothing important. I’ve been here before, that’s all. I gather you know what’s happened?’
She nodded. ‘The twins told me. They couldn’t locate you, so they asked me to pass a few things on to you.’
‘Oh?’
‘They’ve managed to extract some more information out of the Mrin. Brand’s going to be the Child of Light during this particular EVENT.’
‘Brand?’
‘That’s what the Mrin says. The passage reads, “And let him who stands in the stead of the Guardian meet the Child of Dark in the domain of the Bull-God”. That has to mean Brand, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t see how it could mean anybody else. Evidently there’s going to be a suspension of the rules - enough to allow Brand to take up Riva’s sword, at any rate.’
‘The twins didn’t say. They’re still working on that part, I guess. There’s more.’
‘There almost has to be. Give me your hand, Pol. I think I’d better talk with the twins directly, and we both need to hear what they say.’
She nodded and held out her hand to me. For any number of reasons, Pol and I have rarely touched each other over the years, and we’ve even more rarely linked our minds in order to do something. Once again I was startled by the breadth and depth of my daughter’s mind, and by its exquisite subtlety. What struck me the most, however, was her deep sadness. I think we all overlooked the fact that the task she’d freely accepted involved rearing a long series of little boys, watching them grow up, get married, and then grow old and die. The vaults of her mind echoed with an unremitting sorrow that nothing could ever dispel.
Once our minds were linked, we sent out our combined voices. ‘Brothers.’
‘Belgarath?’ Beltira’s voice came back to us. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at Aldurford. Pol’s with me. Could you clarify a few things for us?’
‘Of course.’
‘Have you found out how Brand’s supposed to use the Orb yet?’
‘No. It’s very difficult going here, Belgarath. I think this is going to be a major EVENT. The Mrin always gets very obscure when we come to one of those.’
‘Any hints about what I’m supposed to do?’
‘You and Pol are supposed to go to Riva to meet with the Alorn Kings. Oh, something else, too. You’re supposed to take Iron-grip’s heir to the Stronghold before you go to Riva.’
‘Out of the question!’ Pol’s voice overrode mine. ‘The Stronghold’s directly in Torak’s path.’
‘I’m just passing on what the Mrin says, Pol,’ Beltira replied. ‘It says, “And the Guardian and his dam shall take refuge in the fortress of the horse-people, for all the might of the Dark Child shall not prevail against its walls”. You’re probably right. Torak’s going to lay siege to the Stronghold, but he’s not going to be able to storm it under.’
‘I don’t like it,’ she fumed.
‘It does make sense, Pol,’ I told her, speaking aloud. ‘You and I have to go to Riva, and that wouldn’t be a safe place for Garel and his mother. The whole point of this last eight hundred years has been to keep the heirs and the Orb separated. If we take Garel to Riva, he’ll have to take up the sword, and I gather he’s not ready for that yet.’ Then I sent my thought out to the twins again. ‘Have you been able to get any kind of time-frame on all of this?’
‘From the Mrin? You know that there’s no such thing as time in the Mrin.’
‘Have you heard from Beldin?’
‘Once or twice. Torak’s still at Mal Zeth, and he’s got Zedar and Urvon with him.’
‘We’ve still got plenty of time then.’
‘We’ll see. We’ll keep working on this, but you two had better get started.’
Pol and I started back along the riverbank toward Aldurford. ‘I don’t like this, father,’ she told me again.
‘I don’t very much myself. We’re playing a game, Pol, and we don’t know all the rules yet, so I guess we’ll just have to make one of those great leaps of faith. We have to believe that the Purpose knows what it’s doing.’
‘I still don’t like it.’
‘Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like, Pol. That’s what we get paid to do.’
‘Paid?’
‘Figuratively speaking.’
Garel and his mother didn’t really know too much about their real situation, and Pol and I decided that it might be best to leave it that way. The heirs to Iron-grip’s throne have all been what we’ve come to call ‘talented’ - some more, some less - and it’s a little dangerous to have a novice sorcerer in possession of too much information. Garion, who’s far more than marginally talented, will probably remember any number of times while he was growing up on Faldor’s farm when either Pol or I would skillfully sidestep his questions. The decision to do it that way was Pol’s, of course, but after I thought about it for a bit, I whole-heartedly approved. It headed off all sorts of unpleasant possibilities.
We circulated the usual ‘family emergency’ story around Aldurford for a day or so, and then we bundled up Garel and Adana and left for the Stronghold. When we got there, I had a talk with Cho-Ram, and then the three of us left for Riva.
The weather on the Isle of the Winds is so miserable most of the time anyway that we scarcely noticed the rather profound climate change brought on by that eclipse. The rain was seething across the harbor when we arrived, the stairway leading up to the Citadel looked like a waterfall and the eaves of the slate-roofed stone houses spilled sheets of water into the cobbled streets. I found it all moderately depressing.
Eldrig and Rhodar hadn’t arrived yet, so Pol and I met with Brand and Cho-Ram high in one of those towers that loom up over the Citadel. I’d been roaming around quite a bit during the past several years, so I didn’t really know the current Rivan Warder all that well. Even though the Warder’s office isn’t hereditary, there’s always been a certain continuity of character in the men who’ve held the position. The Rivans don’t quite go as far as the Nyissans do in selecting Salmissra, but they come fairly close when choosing Brand. The Rivan Warders have all been solid, sensible men that we’ve been able to rely on. This one, though, was a truly remarkable man. The putative Child of Light was a big man, but Alorns generally are quite large. Tolnedrans, who are racially small, try to make some issue of an old Tolnedran proverb contrasting physical size with mental capacity. I’m not all that large myself, but I’ve been jerked up short any number of times when I’ve come across brilliant giants. This particular Rivan Warder was intelligent, introspective, and he had a low, deep, quiet voice. I liked him right at the outset, and I grew to like him even more as the years drew us inexorably toward that meeting he was going to have in Arendia. ‘Are you certain that King Garel’s going to be safe at the Stronghold?’ he asked.