Belgarath the Sorcerer (18 page)

‘One likes to be told.'

‘Anything that makes you happy, love.' I will
never
understand women.

Beldin and I spoke together at some length about Belzedar's growing aloofness, but we ultimately concluded that there wasn't very much we could do about it.

Then Beldin raised another issue that was of more immediate concern. ‘There's trouble in Maragor,' he told me.

‘Oh?'

‘I was on my way back from Nyissa when I heard about it. I was in a hurry, so I didn't have time to look into it very deeply.'

‘What's going on?'

‘Some idiot misread one of their sacred texts. Mara must have been about half-asleep when he dictated it. Either that, or the scribe who was writing it down misunderstood him. It hinges on the word “assume”. The Marags are taking that word quite literally, I understand. They've taken to making raids across their borders. They capture Tolnedrans or Nyissans and take them back to Mar Amon. They have a big religious ceremony, and the captives are killed. Then the Marags eat them.'

‘They do
what
?'

‘You heard me, Belgarath. The Marags are practicing ritual cannibalism.'

‘Why doesn't Mara put a stop to it?'

‘How should I know? I'm going back down there as soon as the Master allows me to leave. I think one of us had better have a long talk with Mara. If word of what's going on gets back to Nedra or Issa, there's going to be big trouble.'

‘What
else
can go wrong?' I exploded in exasperation.

‘Lots of things, I'd imagine. Nobody ever promised you that life was going to be easy, did they? I'll go to Mar Amon and see what I can do. I'll send for you if I need any help.'

‘Keep me posted.'

‘If I find out anything meaningful. How are you and Poledra getting along?'

I smirked at him.

‘That's disgusting, Belgarath. You're behaving like some downy-cheeked adolescent.'

‘I know, and I'm enjoying every minute of it.'

‘I'm going to go call on the twins. I'm sure they'll be able to put their hands on a barrel of good ale. I've been in Nyissa for the past few decades, and the Nyissans don't believe in beer. They have other amusements.'

‘Oh?'

‘Certain leaves and berries and roots make them
sooo
happy. Most Nyissans are in a perpetual fog. Are you coming to visit the twins with me?'

‘I don't think so, Beldin. Poledra doesn't like the smell of beer on my breath.'

‘You're hen-pecked, Belgarath.'

‘It doesn't bother me in the slightest, brother,' I smirked at him again, and he stumped away muttering to himself.

The Alorn clan wars re-erupted several times over the next few hundred years. The Bear-Cult was still agitating the outlying clans, but the kings of Aloria were able to keep things under control, usually by attacking cult strongholds
and firmly trampling cult members into the ground. There's a certain direct charm about the Alorn approach to problems, I suppose.

I think it was about the middle of the nineteenth century when I received an urgent summons from Beldin. The Nyissans had been making slave-raids into Maragor, and the Marags responded by invading the lands of the snake-people. I spoke extensively with Poledra and told her in no uncertain terms that I wanted her to stay in the Vale while I was gone. I asserted what minimal authority a pack-leader might have at that point, and she
seemed
to accept that authority - although with Poledra you could never really be entirely sure. She sulked, of course. Poledra could be absolutely adorable when she sulked. Garion will probably understand that, but I doubt that anyone else will.

I kissed my wife's pouty lower lip and left for Maragor - although I'm not sure exactly what Beldin thought I might be able to do. Attempting to rein in the Marags was what you might call an exercise in futility. Marag men were all athletes who carried their brains in their biceps. The women of Maragor encouraged that, I'm afraid. They wanted stamina, not intelligence.

 

All right, Polgara, don't beat it into the ground. I liked the Marags. They had their peculiarities, but they
did
enjoy life.

 

The Marag invasion of Nyissa turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. The Nyissans, like the snakes they so admired, simply slithered off into the jungle, but they left a few surprises behind to entertain the invaders. Pharmacology is an art-form in Nyissa, and not
all
of the berries and leaves that grow in their jungles make people feel good. Any number of them seem to have the opposite effect - although it's sort of hard to say for sure. It's entirely possible that the thousands of Marags who stiffened, went into convulsions, and died as the result of eating an apparently
harmless bit of food were made ecstatic by the various poisons that took them off.

Grimly, the Marags pressed on, stopping occasionally to roast and eat a few prisoners of war. They reached Sthiss Tor, the Nyissan capital, but Queen Salmissra and all of the inhabitants had already melted into the jungles, leaving behind warehouses crammed to the rafters with food. The dim-witted Marags feasted on the food - which proved to be a mistake.

Why am I
surrounded
by people incapable of learning from experience? I wouldn't have to see too many people die from ‘indigestion' to begin to have some doubts about my food source. Would you believe that the Nyissans even managed to poison their cattle herds in such a subtle way that the cows looked plump and perfectly healthy, but when a Marag ate a steak or roast or chop from one of those cows, he immediately turned black in the face and died frothing at the mouth? Fully half of the males of the Marag race died during that abortive invasion.

Things were getting out of hand. Mara wouldn't just sit back and watch the Nyissans exterminate his children for very long before he'd decide to intervene, and once he did that, torpid Issa would be obliged to wake up and respond. Issa was a strange God. After the cracking of the world, he'd simply turned the governance of the snake-people over to his High Priestess, Salmissra, and had gone into hibernation. I guess it hadn't occurred to him to do anything to prolong her life, and so in time she died. The snake-people didn't bother to wake him when she did. They simply selected a replacement.

Beldin and I went looking for the then-current Queen Salmissra so that we could offer to mediate a withdrawal of the Marags. We finally found her in a house deep in the jungles, a house almost identical to her palace in Sthiss Tor. She's probably got those houses scattered all over Nyissa.

We presented ourselves to her eunuchs, and they took us to her throne room, where she lounged, admiring her
reflection in a mirror. Salmissra - like all the other Salmissras - absolutely adored herself.

‘I think you've got a problem, your Majesty,' I told her bluntly when Beldin and I were ushered into her presence. ‘Do you want my brother and me to try to end this war?'

The snake-woman didn't seem to be particularly interested. ‘Do not expend thine energy, Ancient Belgarath,' she yawned. All of the Salmissras have been virtually identical to the first one. They're selected because of their resemblance to her and trained from early childhood to have that same chill, indifferent personality. Actually it makes them easier to deal with. Salmissra - any one of the hundred or so who've worn the name - is always the same person, so you don't have to adjust your thinking.

Beldin, however, managed to get her attention. ‘All right,' he told her with an indifference that matched her own, ‘it's the dry season. Belgarath and I'll set fire to your stinking jungles. We'll burn Nyissa to the ground. Then the Marags will
have
to go home.'

That was the only time I've ever seen any of the Salmissras display any emotion other than sheer animal lust. Her pale eyes widened, and her chalk-white skin turned even whiter. ‘Thou wouldst
not
!' she exclaimed.

Beldin shrugged. ‘Why not? It'll put an end to this war, and if we get rid of all the assorted narcotics, maybe your people can learn to do something productive. Don't toy with me, Snake-Woman, you'll find that I play rough. Let the Marags go home, or I'll burn Nyissa from the mountains to the sea. There won't be a berry or a leaf left - not even the ones that sustain
you
. You'll get old almost immediately, Salmissra, and all those pretty boys you're so fond of will lose interest in you almost as fast.'

She glared at him, and then her colorless eyes began to smolder. ‘You interest me, ugly one,' she told him. ‘I've never coupled with an ape before.'

‘Forget it,' he snarled. ‘I like my women fat and hot-blooded. You're too cold for me, Salmissra.' That was my
brother for you. He was never one to beat around the bush. ‘Do we agree then?' he pressed. ‘If you let the Marags go home, I won't burn your stinking swamp.'

‘The time will come when you'll regret this, Disciple of Aldur.'

‘Ah, me little sweetie,' he replied in that outrageous Wacite brogue. ‘I've regretted many things in me long, long life, don't y' know, but I'll be after tellin' y' one thing, darlin'. Matin' with a snake ain't likely t' be one of 'em.' Then his face hardened. ‘This is the last time I'm going to ask you, Salmissra. Are you going to let the Marags go, or am I going to start lighting torches?'

And that more or less ended the war.

‘You were moderately effective there, old boy,' I complimented my brother as we left Salmissra's jungle hideout. ‘I thought her eyes were going to pop out when you offered to burn her jungle.'

‘It got her attention.' Then he sighed. ‘It might have been very interesting,' he said rather wistfully.

‘What might have?'

‘Never mind.'

We nursed the limping Marag column back to their own borders, leaving thousands of dead behind us in those reeking swamps, and then Beldin and I returned to the Vale.

When we got there, our Master sent me back to Aloria. ‘The Queen of the Alorns is with child,' he told me. ‘The one for whom we have waited is about to be born. I would have thee present at this birth and at diverse other times during his youth.'

‘Are we sure he's the right one, Master?' I asked him.

He nodded. ‘The signs are all present. Thou wilt know him when first thou seest him. Go thou to Val Alorn, therefore. Verify his identity and then return.'

And that's how I came to be present when Cherek Bear-shoulders was born. When one of the midwives brought the red-faced, squalling infant out of the queen's bedroom, I knew immediately that my Master had been right. Don't
ask me how I knew, I just did. Cherek and I had been linked since the beginning of time, and I recognized him the moment I laid eyes on him. I congratulated his father and then went back to the Vale to report to my Master, and, I hoped, to spend some time with my wife.

I went back to Aloria a number of times during Cherek's boyhood, and we got to know each other quite well. By the time he was ten, he was as big as a full-grown man, and he kept on growing. He was over seven feet tall when he ascended the throne of Aloria at the age of nineteen. We gave him some time to get accustomed to his crown, and then I went back to Val Alorn and arranged a marriage for him. I can't remember what the girl's name was, but she did what she was supposed to do. Cherek was about twenty-three when his first son, Dras, was born, and about twenty-five when Algar came along. Riva, his third son, was born when the King of Aloria was twenty-seven. My Master was pleased. Everything was happening the way it was supposed to.

Cherek's three sons grew as fast as he had. Alorns are large people anyway, but Dras, Algar, and Riva took that tendency to extremes. Walking into a room where Cherek and his sons were was sort of like walking into a grove of trees. The word ‘giant' is used rather carelessly at times, but it was no exaggeration when it was used to describe those four.

As I've suggested several times, my Master had at least
some
knowledge of the future, but he shared that knowledge only sparingly with us. I knew that Cherek and his sons and I were supposed to do
something
, but my Master wouldn't tell me exactly what, reasoning, I suppose, that if I knew too much about it, I might in some way tamper with it and make it come out wrong.

I'd gone to Aloria during the summer when Riva turned eighteen. That was a fairly significant anniversary in a young Alorn's life back then, because it was on his eighteenth birthday that a description of him was added to
his name. Four years previously, Riva's older brother had become Dras Bull-neck, and two years after that, Algar had been dubbed Algar Fleet-foot. Riva, who had huge hands, became Iron-grip. I honestly believe that he could have crushed rocks into powder in those hands of his.

Poledra had a little surprise for me when I returned to the Vale. ‘One wonders if you have finished with these errands for a time,' she said when I got home to our tower.

‘One hopes so,' I replied. We didn't
exactly
speak to each other in wolvish when we were alone, but we came close. ‘One's Master will decide that, however,' I added.

‘One will speak with the Master,' she told me. ‘It is proper that you stay here for a time.'

‘Oh?'

‘It is a custom, and customs should be observed.'

‘Which custom is that?'

‘The one which tells us that the sire should be present at the births of his young.'

I stared at her. ‘Why didn't you tell me?' I demanded.

‘I just did. What would you like for supper?'

Poledra largely ignored her pregnancy. ‘It's a natural process,' she told me with a shrug. ‘There's nothing very remarkable about it.' She continued attending to what she felt were her duties even as her waist-line expanded and her movements became increasingly awkward, and nothing I could do or say could persuade her to change her set routine.

Over the centuries, she'd made some significant alterations to my tower. As you may have heard, I'm not the neatest person in the world, but that's never bothered me very much. A bit of clutter gives a place that lived-in look, don't you agree? That all changed after Poledra and I were married. There weren't any interior walls in my tower, largely because I like to be able to look out all of my windows when I'm working. I sort of haphazardly arranged my living space - this area for cooking and eating, that for study, and the one over there for sleeping. It worked out fairly well while I was alone. My location in the various parts of the tower told me what I was supposed to be doing.

Poledra didn't like it that way. I think she wanted greater definition. She started adding furniture - tables, couches, and brightly colored cushions. She loved bright colors for some reason. The rugs she'd scattered about on the stone floor gave me some trouble. I was forever tripping over them. All in all, though, her little touches made that rather bleak tower room a more homey sort of place, and homeyness seems to be important to females of just about any species. I'd suspect that even female snakes add a few decorations to their dens. I was tolerant of these peculiarities, but one thing drove me absolutely wild. She was for
ever putting things away - and I usually couldn't find them afterward. When I'm working on something, I like to keep it right out in plain sight, but no sooner would I lay something down than she'd pick it up and stick it on a shelf. I think putting up those shelves had been a mistake, but she'd insisted, and during the early years of our marriage I'd been more than willing to accommodate her every whim.

We
had
argued extensively about curtains, however. What
is
this thing women have about curtains? All they really do is get in the way. They don't hold in any appreciable heat in the winter time, nor keep it out in the summer, and they get in the way when you want to look out. For some reason, though, women don't feel that a room is complete without curtains.

She may have gone through that period of morning-sickness that afflicts most pregnant women, but if she did, she didn't tell me about it. Poledra's always up and about at first light, but I tend to be a late riser if I don't have something important to attend to. Regardless of what my daughter may think, that's not a symptom of laziness. It's just that I like to talk, and evenings are the time for talk. I usually go to bed late and get up late. I don't sleep any longer than Polgara does, it's just that we keep different hours. At any rate, Poledra may or may not have endured that morning nausea, but she didn't make an issue of it. She
did
develop those peculiar appetites, though. The first few times she asked for strange foods, I tore the Vale apart looking for them. Once I realized that she was only going to take a few bites, however, I started cheating. I
wasn't
going to sprout wings and fly to the nearest ocean just because she had a sudden craving for oysters. A
created
oyster tastes almost the same as a real one, so she pretended not to notice my subterfuge.

Then, when she was about five months along, we got into the business of cradles. I was a little hurt by the fact that she asked the twins to make them instead of having me do it. I protested, but she bluntly told me, ‘You're not
good with tools.' She put her hand on my favorite chair and shook it. I'll concede that it wobbled a bit, but it hadn't collapsed under me in the thousand or so years I'd been sitting in it. That's sturdy enough, isn't it?

The twins went all out in building those cradles. When you get right down to it, a cradle's just a small bed with rockers on it. The ones the twins built, however, had elaborately curled rockers and intricately carved headboards.

‘Why two?' I asked my wife after Beltira and Belkira had proudly delivered their handiwork to our tower.

‘It doesn't hurt to be prepared for any eventuality,' she replied. ‘It's not uncommon for several young to be born at the same time.' She laid one hand on her distended belly. ‘Soon I'll be able to count the heartbeats. Then I'll know if two cradles will be enough.'

I considered the implications of that and chose not to pursue the matter any further. There were some things I'd decided that I wouldn't even
think
about, much less bring out into the open.

Poledra's pregnancy may not have been remarkable to
her
, but it certainly was to
me
. I was so swollen up with pride that I was probably unbearable to be around. My Master accepted my boasting with fondly amused tolerance, and the twins were quite nearly as ecstatic as I was. Shepherds get all moony at lambing time, so I suppose their reaction was only natural. Beldin, however, soon reached the point where he couldn't stand to be around me, and he went off to Tolnedra to keep watch over the second Honethite Dynasty. The Tolnedrans were establishing trade relations with the Arends and the Nyissans, and the Honeths have always been acquisitive. We definitely didn't want them to start getting ideas about annexation. One war between the Gods had been quite enough, thank you.

Winter came early that year, and it seemed much more severe than usual. Trees were exploding in the cold in the far north, and the snow was piling up to incredible depths.
Then on a bitterly cold day when the sky was spitting pellets of snow as hard as pebbles, four Alorns bundled to the ears in fur came down into the Vale. I was able to recognize them from a considerable distance because of their size.

‘Well met, Ancient Belgarath,' Cherek Bear-shoulders greeted me when I went out to meet him and his sons. I
wish
people wouldn't call me that.

‘You're a long way from home, Cherek,' I noted. ‘Is there some sort of problem?'

‘Just the opposite, Revered One,' Dras Bull-neck rumbled at me. Dras was even bigger than his father, and his voice came up out of his boots. ‘My brothers have found a way to reach Mallorea.'

I looked quickly at Iron-grip and Fleet-foot. Riva was nearly as tall as Dras, but leaner. He had a fierce black beard and piercing blue eyes. Algar, the silent brother, was clean-shaven, and he had the rangy limbs of a coursing hound. ‘We were hunting,' Riva explained. ‘There are white bears in the far north, and mother's birthday is in the spring. Algar and I wanted to give her a white fur cape as a present. She'd like that, wouldn't she?' There was a strange, boyish innocence about Riva. It's not that he was stupid or anything. It was just that he was eager to please and always enthusiastic. Sometimes he almost seemed to bubble.

Algar, of course, didn't say anything. He almost never did. He was the most close-mouthed man I've ever known.

‘I've heard about those white bears,' I said. ‘Isn't hunting them just a little dangerous?'

Riva shrugged. ‘There were two of us,' he said - as if that would make a difference to a fourteen-foot bear weighing almost a ton. ‘Anyway, the ice is very thick in the northern reaches of the Sea of the East this year. We'd wounded a bear, and he was trying to get away from us. We were chasing him, and that's when we found the bridge.'

‘What bridge?'

‘The one that crosses over to Mallorea.' He said it in
the most off-hand way imaginable, as if the discovery of something the Alorns had been trying to find for two thousand years wasn't really all that important.

‘I don't suppose you'd care to give me a few details about this bridge?' I suggested.

‘I was just getting to that. There's a point that juts out to the east up in Morindland, and another that juts toward the west out of the lands of the Karands over in Mallorea. There's a string of rocky little islets that connects the two. The bear had gotten away from us somehow. It was sort of foggy that day, and it's very hard to see a white bear in the fog. Algar and I were curious, so we crossed the ice, following that string of islands. About mid-afternoon a breeze came up and blew off the fog. We looked up, and there was Mallorea. We decided not to go exploring, though. There's no point in letting Torak know that we've discovered the bridge, is there? We turned around and came back. We ran across a tribe of Morindim and they told us that they've been using that bridge for centuries to visit the Karands. A Morind will give you anything he owns for a string of glass beads, and Karandese traders seem to know that. The Morinds will trade ivory walrus tusks and priceless sea-otter skins and the hides of those dangerous white bears for a string of beads you can buy in any country fair for a penny.' His eyes narrowed. ‘I hate it when people cheat other people, don't you?' Riva definitely had opinions.

Bear-shoulders gave me a rueful smile. ‘We could have found out about this years ago if we'd taken the trouble to spend some time with the Morindim. We've been tearing the north apart for two thousand years trying to find some way to cross over to Mallorea and pick up the war with the Angaraks where we left off, and the Morindim knew the way all along. We've
got
to learn to pay more attention to our neighbors.'

 

As nearly as I can recall, that's fairly close to the way the conversation went. Those of you who've read the BOOK
OF ALORN will realize that the priest of Belar who wrote those early passages took a great deal of liberty with his material. It just goes to show you that you should never trust a priest to be entirely factual.

 

I gave Cherek Bear-shoulders a rather hard look. I could see where this was going. ‘This is all very interesting, Cherek, but why are you bringing it to me?'

‘We thought you'd like to know, Belgarath,' he said with an ingeniously feigned look of innocence. Cherek was a very shrewd man, but he could be terribly transparent sometimes.

‘Don't try to be coy with me, Cherek,' I told him. ‘Exactly what have you got on your mind?'

‘It's not really all that complicated, Belgarath. The boys and I thought we might drift on over to Mallorea and steal your Master's Orb back from Torak One-eye.' He said it as if he were proposing a stroll in the park. ‘Then we got to thinking that you might want to come along, so we decided to come down here and invite you.'

‘Absolutely out of the question,' I snapped. ‘My wife's going to have a baby, and I'm
not
going to leave her here alone.'

‘Congratulations,' Algar murmured. It was the only word he spoke that whole afternoon.

‘Thank you,' I replied. Then I turned back to his father, ‘All right, Cherek. We know that this bridge of yours is there. It'll still be there next year. I might be willing to discuss this expedition of yours then - but not now.'

‘There might be a problem with that, Belgarath,' he said seriously. ‘When my sons told me about what they'd found, I went to the priests of Belar and had them examine the auguries.
This
is the year to go. The ice up there won't be as thick again for years and years. Then they cast my
own
auguries, and from what they say,
this
could be the most fortunate year in my whole life.'

‘Do you actually
believe
that superstitious nonsense?' I demanded. ‘Are you so gullible that you think that somebody can foretell the future by fondling a pile of sheep-guts?'

He looked a little injured. ‘This was
important
, Belgarath. I certainly wouldn't trust sheep's entrails for something like this.'

‘I'm glad to hear that.'

‘We used a horse instead. Horse-guts never lie.'

Alorns
!

‘I wish you all the luck in the world, Cherek,' I told him, ‘but I won't be going with you.'

A pained look came over his massive, bearded face. ‘There's a bit of a problem there, Belgarath. The auguries clearly state that we'll fail if you don't go along.'

‘You can gut a dragon if you want to, Cherek, but I'm staying right here. Take the twins - or I'll send for Beldin.'

‘It wouldn't be the same, Belgarath. It has to be
you
. Even the stars say that.'

‘Astrology, too? You Alorns
are
branching out, aren't you? Do the priests of Belar sprinkle stars on the gut-pile?'

‘
Belgarath
!' he said in a shocked tone of voice, ‘that's sacrilegious!'

‘Tell me,' I said sarcastically, ‘have your priests tried a crystal ball yet? Or tea-leaves?'

-
All right, Belgarath, that's enough
. - It was one of the very few times I've ever heard that voice. Garion's been hearing it since he was a child, but it seldom had occasion to speak to
me
. Needless to say, I was just a bit startled. I even looked around to see where it was coming from, but there wasn't anybody there. The voice was inside my head.

-
Are you ready to listen?
- it demanded.

-
Who are you?
-

-
You know who I am. Stop arguing. You WILL go to Mallorea, and you WILL go now. It's one of those things that has to happen. You'd better go talk with Aldur
. - And then the sense of that other presence in my mind was gone.

I was more than a little shaken by this visitation. I suppose I tried to deny it, but I
did
know who'd been talking to me. ‘Wait here,' I bluntly told the King of Aloria and his sons. ‘I have to go talk with Aldur.'

‘I can see that thou art troubled, my son,' our Master said to me after I'd entered his tower.