Belgarath the Sorcerer (71 page)

They looked at each other. ‘She's a long way ahead of him by now,' Belkira said to his brother. ‘I don't think he could catch her, so we might as well tell him.'

‘You're probably right,' Beltira agreed. ‘She's gone to Nyissa, Belgarath.'

‘Nyissa? What for?'

‘Pol's got ways to get information - and instructions. You knew about that, of course, didn't you?'

I'd known that Pol received her own instructions. It simply never occurred to me that hers might come from a different source than mine. I nodded.

‘Anyway,' Beltira went on, ‘Pol received a warning that Ctuchik's been following up on something Zedar did back at the beginning of the fifth millennium. He's been in contact with the current Salmissra, and he's just about persuaded her to join with him. Pol was instructed to go to Sthiss Tor to talk her out of it.'

‘Why Pol?' I asked him. ‘
I
could have taken care of that.'

‘Pol didn't go into too much detail,' Belkira replied. ‘You know how she can be sometimes. Evidently, it's something that requires a woman's touch.'

‘We aren't the only ones who have prophecies, Belgarath,' Beltira reminded me. ‘The Salmissras have their own ways to see into the future. They've all been far more afraid of Polgara than they have been of you. Pol's going to do something pretty awful to one of the Serpent Queens, I guess, and she's gone to Sthiss Tor to ask the current Salmissra if she's volunteering to be the one it happens to. That all by itself should be enough to persuade Salmissra to break off her contacts with Ctuchik.'

‘All right, but why all this subterfuge? Why didn't she just tell
me
about it? Why did she sneak around behind my back?'

Belkira smiled. ‘She explained it to us,' he said. ‘You don't
really
want us to repeat what she said, do you?'

‘I think I can probably live with it. Go ahead and tell me.'

He shrugged. ‘It's up to you. She said that you're tiresomely overprotective, and that every time she sets out to do something, you argue with her about it for weeks on end. Then she said that she was going to do this whether you liked it or not, and that things would go more smoothly if you kept your nose out of it.' He grinned at me.

‘I don't think that's particularly funny, Belkira.'

‘It was when
she
said it. I've glossed over some of the words she used. Pol's got quite a vocabulary, hasn't she?'

I gave him a long, steady look. ‘Why don't we just drop it?' I suggested.

‘Anything you say, brother.'

‘The next time she talks with you, ask her to stop by the Vale on her way home. Tell her that I'm looking forward to a little chat.'

Then I turned around and went on back to the Vale.

About a month later, Pol obediently came to my tower. I'd calmed down by then, so I didn't berate her - at least not
too
much.

‘You seem to be taking this very well, old man,' she noted.

‘There's not much point in screaming about something after it's over. Exactly what was Ctuchik up to?'

‘The usual,' she replied. ‘He's trying to subvert enough people in the west to help him when the time comes. The Murgos have re-opened the South Caravan Route, and they're flooding into the west again. I think we'd all better start concentrating on the Mrin Codex. Ctuchik seems to believe that things are coming to a head. He's doing everything he can to drive the western kingdoms apart. He
definitely
doesn't want us to be unified next time the way we were at Vo Mimbre. Angarak alliances are tenuous at best, and it seems that Ctuchik wants to sow dissension in the west to off-set that.'

‘You're getting very good at this, Pol.'

‘I've had a good teacher.'

‘Thank you,' I said, and for a minute there, I felt unaccountably grateful to that unpredictable daughter of mine.

‘Don't mention it.' She grinned at me.

‘Why don't you go on back to Cherek and send the twins home? If anybody's going to get anything definite out of the Mrin, they'll be the ones who'll do it.'

‘Whatever you say, father.'

It took the twins until the turn of the century to start getting what we needed out of the Mrin Codex. In the spring of the year 5300 they came to my tower bubbling over with excitement. ‘It's just about to happen, Belgarath!' Beltira exclaimed. ‘The Godslayer will arrive during this century!'

‘It's about time,' I said. ‘What took you two so long to dig it out?'

‘We weren't supposed to find it until now,' Belkira replied.

‘Would you like to clarify that?'

‘The Necessity's got a much tighter control than we've ever realized,' he said. ‘The passage that told us that
this
is the century when it's all going to happen is right out there in plain sight. We've all read it dozens of times, but it didn't make any sense until now. Last night, though, the meaning of it just fell into place in our minds. We've talked it over, and we're both sure that no matter how much we struggle with the Mrin, we're not going to understand what any given passage means until the Necessity's ready for us to understand it. In a peculiar sort of way, the understanding itself is a part of the EVENT.'

‘That's a mighty cumbersome way to do business,' I objected. ‘Why would the Necessity play those kind of games with all of us?'

‘We talked about that too, Belgarath,' Beltira told me. ‘It almost seems designed to keep
you
from tampering. We think that the Necessity's rather fond of you, but it knows you too well to give you enough time to step in and try to change things.'

‘You
do
try to do that a lot, you know,' Belkira said, grinning at me.

I suppose I should have been offended by the twins' insulting line of speculation, but I guess I really wasn't. I'd known Garion's friend for long enough now to have a pretty clear idea of his opinion of me, and I
have
tried to tamper with things on occasion. I guess it goes back to something I've said before; I'm not temperamentally equipped to just sit back and let destiny take its course. No matter how clever I think I am, though, Garion's friend is always about two jumps ahead of me. I should be used to that by now, I guess, but I'm not.

A part of the reason that I didn't get
too
excited about those unflattering observations was the fact that I was much
more
excited by the information that we'd finally reached the century during which the Godslayer would be born. I pestered poor Polgara unmercifully during the first three decades of the fifty-fourth century. I'd stop by every two or three months to find out if the heir's wife was pregnant, and I insisted on being present at every birth in that little family.

Pol was living in Medalia in central Sendaria at the time, and the current heir's name was Darral. I was very disappointed when, in 5329, Darral's wife, Alara, gave birth to a baby boy and the infant's birth wasn't accompanied by any of the necessary signs and portents. He wasn't the Godslayer. Pol named him Geran, and it somehow seemed very right.

Maybe it was the fact that Darral was a stone-cutter that moved my daughter to relocate the family to the mountain village of Annath, just on the Sendarian side of the Algarian
border, in 5834. There were extensive stone-quarries in the area, so Darral could find steady work.

I had a few qualms about that. The name Annath seemed to send a chill through me for some reason. It wasn't that Annath was such a bad little town. It was much like every mountain village in the world. It had one street, which is normal for a town built at the bottom of a steep valley, and as it had grown, the houses of the new arrivals were simply added on to each end of that street. It made the town a little strung out, but that didn't bother anybody. People who live in the mountains are used to walking. The sides of the valley were covered with aspens, and that gave Annath a light and airy atmosphere. Some mountain towns are up to their ears in fir and spruce, and they're perpetually gloomy as a result. Annath wasn't like that, but it chilled me all the same.

I didn't have time to stand around shivering, though, because I had to go to Boktor for the birth of one of the members of the extended royal family of Drasnia. They named him Prince Kheldar, though he was far down in the line of succession, but his birth and his name filled the air around him with those signs and portents which I'd so sorely missed at the birth of Geran. The Mrin refers to him as the ‘Guide,' but the rest of the world knows him by the nickname his classmates at the academy of the Drasnian intelligence service gave him when he was a student there - Silk.

I was kept running for the next few years. The ‘Guide' was born in 5335, and so was the ‘Blind Man' - Relg the Ulgo zealot. Then, in 5336, the son of the Earl of Trellheim was born. They named him Barak, but the Mrin calls him the ‘Dreadful Bear.' In the following year, the ‘Horse Lord' and the ‘Knight Protector' - Hettar and Mandorallen - came along. The ‘Companions' were sprouting all around me, but where was the ‘Godslayer'?

Then in the spring of 5338, I received an urgent summons from Polgara. I hurried on up to Annath, thinking the
worst, but there wasn't any emergency that
I
could see. Pol seemed quite calm when she met me near a stone-quarry on the edge of town.

‘What's the problem here, Pol?' I asked her.

‘No problem, father,' she replied with a slight shrug. ‘I just need somebody to fill in for me for a few months. I have something I have to take care of.'

‘Oh? What's that?'

‘I'm not at liberty to discuss it.'

‘Are we going to play
that
tired old game again, Pol?'

‘It's not a game, father, and if you're tired of it, I'll call the twins instead.'

‘You
can't
pull them out of the Vale now, Pol! There's too much going on at the moment for them to go off and leave the Mrin!'

‘And uncle Beldin's keeping watch over Torak. That's important, too. I guess you're elected, father - whether you like it or not. You're not
really
doing anything important right now, are you? The midwives can deliver these various babies without your supervision. Look after Darral and the little boy, old man - and if you say, “Why me?” I'll snatch out your beard.'

‘I'm not your servant, Pol.'

‘No, you're not. You're the servant of something far more important, and so am I. I have an errand to take care of, and you're supposed to take over here while I'm gone.'

‘The Master didn't say anything to
me
about this.'

‘He's busy right now, so I'm passing the instructions on for him. Just do it, father. Don't argue with me.'

Before I could think up any kind of reply, she blurred and was gone.

I swore for a while, and then I stamped down into the village. Geran, who was about nine or so, was waiting for me outside the solid house his father had built at the east end of Annath's single street. ‘Hello, grandfather,' he greeted me. ‘Did Aunt Pol talk with you?'

‘Talk
to
would come closer, Geran,' I replied sourly. ‘Did
she happen to mention to
you
where she's going?'

‘Not that I remember, no, but there's nothing unusual about that. Aunt Pol hardly ever tells us what she's going to do - or why.'

‘You've noticed that, I see. Where's your mother?'

‘She stepped on down to the baker's shop for a minute. Aunt Pol said that you'd be staying with us for a while, and mother knows how fond you are of pastries.'

‘We all have our little weaknesses, I suppose.'

‘Mother should be back fairly soon,' he said, ‘but as long as we're waiting anyway, do you suppose you could tell me a story?'

I laughed. ‘I might as well,' I said. ‘Your Aunt's nailed me to the ground here until she gets back, so we'll have lots of time for stories.' I looked at him a bit more closely. Although, like most of the members of his family, he'd been born with that sandy-colored hair, Geran's hair was beginning to turn dark. He'd never be as big as Iron-grip had been, but I could already see certain resemblances.

 

A little word of caution here, if you don't mind. When you know that something's going to happen, you'll start trying to see signs of its approach in just about everything. Always try to remember that
most
of the things that happen in this world
aren't
signs. They happen because they happen, and their only real significance lies in normal cause and effect. You'll drive yourself crazy if you start trying to pry the meaning out of every gust of wind or rain-squall. I'm not denying that there might actually
be
a few signs that you won't want to miss. Knowing the difference is the tricky part.

 

I've always enjoyed the company of my grandsons. There's a peculiarly earnest quality about them that I find appealing. I'm not trying to say that they don't occasionally do things that are a bit foolish and sometimes downright dangerous - Garion's encounter with the wild boar in the
woods outside Val Alorn sort of leaps to mind - but if you're willing to follow their occasionally faulty reasoning, you'll find that, in their own minds at least, most of the things they do are fully justified. The descendants of Iron-grip and Beldaran have always been very serious little boys. A sense of humor might have rounded out their personalities, but you can't have everything.

Despite the fact that Polgara had ruthlessly dragooned me into watching over Geran, I'll admit that I enjoyed those months I spent with him. I'll never be the kind of fisherman Durnik is, but I know the basics - which is to say that I can bait a hook. But Geran was at that age in a young boy's life when catching fish becomes an all-consuming passion. Years of observation have taught me that this particular passion crops up just before the boy suddenly realizes that there are two kinds of people in the world - boy people and girl people. In a general sort of way, most boys approve of that.

If only they wouldn't behave as if they thought they'd invented it.

Anyway, Geran and I spent that spring and summer in search of the wily trout. There are other kinds of fish in the world, of course, but it's always seemed to me that trout are the most challenging. Moreover, if you're not
too
noisy about it, you can have some fairly serious conversations while you're waiting for the fish to start biting.

I particularly remember one truly miserable, but at the same time absolutely wonderful day my grandson and I spent huddled on a makeshift raft in the center of a small mountain lake with a drizzling rain hissing into the water around us. I'm not sure exactly why, but the trout were in a positive frenzy. Geran and I caught more fish that day than we'd normally catch in a week.

About mid-afternoon, when we were both soaked to the skin and the wicker basket we'd brought along ‘just in case we got lucky' was filled almost to the brim with silvery-sided trout, things began to slow down a bit. ‘This is really
a lot of fun, grandfather,' my fishing partner noted. ‘I wish we could do it more often.'

‘Geran,' I replied, ‘we've been out fishing every day for the past three weeks. You can't
get
much more often than that.'

‘Yes, but today we're
catching
them.'

I laughed. ‘That always seems to help,' I agreed.

‘We're not the same as other people, are we?' he asked then.

‘Because we both like to fish? There are a lot of fishermen in the world, Geran.'

‘That's not what I mean. I'm talking about our family. It seems to me that there's something sort of different about us - something a little odd and special.' He made a small face and wiped the water off his nose on his sleeve. ‘I didn't say that very well, did I? I'm not trying to say that we're really important or anything like that, but we're just not like other people - at least that's the way it seems to me. Aunt Pol never talks to
me
about it, but sometimes at night I can hear her talking with my father down in the kitchen before I go to sleep. She knows a
lot
of people, doesn't she?'

‘Your Aunt? Oh, yes, Geran. Your Aunt Pol knows people in just about every kingdom in the west.'

‘What I can't understand is
how
she got to know all those kings and nobles and such. She almost never goes anywhere. You know what I think?'

‘What's that, boy?'

‘I think Aunt Pol's a lot older than she looks.'

‘She's what they call “well-preserved”, Geran. I wouldn't make a big issue of it, if I were you, though. Ladies are a little sensitive about how old they are.'

‘
You're
old, and it doesn't seem to bother
you
.'

‘That's because I never really grew up. I still know how to have fun. That's what keeps you young. Your Aunt thinks that having fun isn't important.'

‘She's very strange, isn't she? Sometimes I think she's the strangest woman in the world.'

I broke down and laughed at that point.

‘What's so funny?'

‘Someday I'll explain it to you. You're right, though. Our family
is
special, but it's important right now for us all to behave as if we were ordinary. Your Aunt will explain it to you when you're a little older.'

‘Does it make you feel good? Being special, I mean?'

‘Not really. It's just something else that you have to carry around with you. It's not all that complicated, Geran. There's something very important that our family has to do, and there are people in the world who don't want us to do it.'

‘We'll do it anyway, though, won't we?' His boyish face was very determined.

‘I think we probably will - but that's still a ways off yet. Are you going to pull that fish in? Or are you planning to just keep him on the line for the rest of the day?'

My grandson gave a small whoop and pulled in a trout that probably weighed about five pounds.

I think back on that day fairly often. All things considered, it was one of the better ones.

It was almost winter when Polgara returned. The leaves had changed color and then fallen to the ground, the sky had turned grey, and there was the smell of approaching snow when she came walking down the single street of Annath with a blue cloak wrapped about her and a look of satisfaction on her face.

I saw her coming and I went out to meet her. ‘Back so soon, Pol?' I bantered. ‘We hardly even had time to miss you.
Now
do you suppose you could tell me where you went and what you were doing?'

She shrugged. ‘I had to go to Nyissa again. There were some people there I had to meet.'

‘Oh? Who?'

‘Zedar, for one, and the current Salmissra for another.'

‘Pol, stay away from Zedar! You're good, but not
that
good.'

‘It was required, father. Zedar and I
have
to know each other. It's one of
those
things.'

‘What's Zedar up to?' I demanded.

‘I can't see why you've all been so excited about Zedar. Actually, he's rather pathetic. He's terribly shabby, he's not eating right, and he looks awfully unhealthy.'

‘Good. I wish him all the pleasures of ill-health. I'll even invent some new diseases for him, if what's currently available starts to bore him.'