Polgara the Sorceress (35 page)

As it turned out, however, another old friend came by on the afternoon of the day before we’d planned to depart. Earl Mangaran, the de facto Duke of Asturia, had been conferring with Corrolin in Vo Mimbre, and, accompanied by his heavily armed troop of bodyguards, he came riding up the long causeway to Vo Mandor.

Mangaran hadn’t noticeably aged since the coup that had elevated him to the throne, but his eyes looked very tired. After all the greetings in the courtyard, Mandorin led us to
a secure room high in one of the towers to discuss certain state matters. Given the nature of Vo Mandor, I didn’t really think those precautions were necessary, but this
was
still Arendia, after all.

‘Well, Mangaran,’ Asrana asked after we’d all seated ourselves, ‘did some emergency send you off to Vo Mimbre, or did you just yearn for Duke Corrolin’s company?’

Mangaran passed a weary hand across his face. ‘I sometimes think I might have been wiser to have left town when you ladies were plotting our little revolution,’ he said. ‘Now I think I know why Oldoran spent all his time up to his eyebrows in drink. There are
so
many details.’ He sighed mournfully. ‘I went on down to Vo Mimbre to advise Duke Corrolin that there’s serious trouble in Vo Astur. Now I’m on my way to Vo Wacune to talk with Duke Kathandrion about the same matter. I’m advising the both of them that they’d better form a strong alliance. Asturia’s right on the verge of going up in flames.’

‘There’s nothing new about that, Mangaran,’ Asrana noted. ‘Asturia’s been smouldering since I was a little girl. Which particular embers are glowing this time?’

‘I rather suspect that history’s going to call this “the nephew war”,’ Mangaran replied with a gloomy face. ‘I have no living sons, and my claim to the ducal throne is fairly specious. We
did
depose Oldoran on the flimsiest of legal grounds that day, and the one who should
legally
have taken his place was his eldest nephew, Nerasin.’

Asrana made a retching sound.

‘My sentiments exactly, Baroness,’ Mangaran said smoothly. Then he went on. ‘Unfortunately,
my
eldest nephew isn’t much better than Nerasin. He’s a foolish wastrel who’s up to his ears in gambling debts. To put it bluntly, I wouldn’t put him in charge of a pig-pen.’

‘I’ve met him, Polly,’ Asrana told me. ‘His name’s Olburton, and he’s at least as bad as Nerasin is. If either of those two succeeds Mangaran here, Asturia’s going to simply disintegrate into little clusters of warring estates.’ She looked rather coolly at her husband. ‘And there are those in Mimbre who might just decide to take advantage of that, aren’t there, love?’

Mandorin sighed. ‘I do fear me that thou hast spoken truly,’ he admitted.

‘And there are border nobles in Wacune who’ll feel the same way,’ I added. ‘What
is
it about proximity to a border that brings out the worst in people?’

‘Oh, that’s easy, Polly,’ Asrana said with a cynical laugh. ‘All the world knows that the people on the other side of any border aren’t really human, so whatever they happen to own rightfully belongs to
real
humans on our side of the line.’

‘That’s a brutal view of life, Asrana,’ I scolded her.

True, though,’ she replied with a saucy toss of her head.

‘I cannot believe this is truly happening,’ Mandorin protested. ‘The hard-won peace which we all struggled so valiantly to wrest from the jaws of unending war is now at the mercy of a pair of Asturian popinjays.’

‘And to make matters worse, there’s not much we can do about it,’ Mangaran mourned. ‘Fortunately, I won’t be around when it happens.’

‘What an odd thing,’ Asrana noted thoughtfully. ‘Peace requires rulers every bit as strong as war does. Mangaran, dear, why don’t you leave a parting gift to poor old Asturia? Put a clause in your will that’ll send both of these incompetent nephews to the headsman’s block. A man with no head doesn’t have much use for a crown, does he?’

‘Asrana!’
Mandorin gasped.

‘I was only joking, love,’ she assured him. Then she frowned slightly. ‘It is a solution, though,’ she mused, ‘but why don’t we do it
before
Mangaran’s been gathered to the bosom of Chaldan? A little bit of poison in the right places would solve the whole problem, wouldn’t it? Then we could poison our way through the ranks of Asturian nobility until we finally found someone competent enough to rule.’

‘A bit simplistic, Asrana,’ Mangaran chided.

The simple ones are the best, old friend,’ she told him. ‘We’re all Arends, after all, and complications confuse us.’

‘I’ll admit that I’m tempted,’ Mangaran said with a wicked grin.

‘I’d strongly advise against it,’ I told them. ‘The introduc
tion of poison into politics always seems to spur imitation, I’ve noticed, and
everybody
has to eat now and then.’

‘Poisons are very rare though,’ Asrana said, ‘and very expensive, aren’t they?’

‘Good heavens no, Asrana,’ I told her. ‘I could find deadly poisons growing in flower beds right here in Vo Mandor, if I really needed some. They’re so common that I’m sometimes surprised that half the population doesn’t die off from accidental exposure to them. There are even some ordinary plants that are a part of everybody’s diet that have poisonous leaves on them. If you eat the roots, you’re fine; if you eat the leaves, you’re dead. If you want to kill somebody, use an axe or a knife. Don’t open that door marked “poison”. I’ll keep an eye on things in Asturia, so please don’t all of you rush into exotic solutions.’

‘Spoilsport,’ Asrana pouted.

Since Mangaran was going on to Vo Wacune anyway, Killane and I accompanied him, though my seneschal – if that’s the proper term – was quite uncomfortable in the presence of so many Asturians. Hereditary animosities die hard, I’ve noticed, and peace was still something of a novelty in Arendia.

Mangaran’s ‘Nephew War’ wasn’t too hard to defuse, since the people attracted to either camp were the sort who
talked
a good fight but tended to fade back into the woodwork when trouble broke out. I had Mangaran track down the more vocal adherents of both Nerasin and Olburton, and after I’d had a few pointed interviews with the more prominent partisans on either side, the whole business cooled down noticeably. One
does
have a certain reputation, after all, and I was fairly free with some threats that I probably wouldn’t have carried out even if I’d been sure just exactly how to pull them off.

The rulers of the three duchies took that to be some sort of sign from on high, and whether I really wanted the position or not, I became the semi-official presiding officer at the meetings of the Arendish Council each summer.

Things went on in this fashion for some years, and by dint of a mixture of persuasion, threats, and sheer force of will I was able to maintain the shaky peace in Arendia.

Young Alleran grew up during those years, and he was married shortly after his eighteenth birthday. I’d stayed rather close to Alleran during his formative years and had gently led him astray. His parents, Kathandrion and Elisera, had done their very best to raise him as full-bore Arend – all nobility and no brains – but I tampered just enough to keep his strain of common sense intact. Asrana’s observation during the meeting at Vo Mandor was still very apt. A ruler during peacetime must be at least as strong as one who’s presiding over a war, and nothing helps to make a ruler strong quite as much as common sense.

I had an unlikely assistant in my campaign to contaminate Alleran’s pure Arendish understanding. Though Alleran was ostensibly visiting his ‘Aunt Pol’ – that particular title’s been following me around for centuries – I found that more often than not, he spent his time with Killane, and who better to give instruction in practicality than a master builder? Between us, Killane and I turned out a young man eminently qualified to rule. He could ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ with the best of them, but his mind didn’t stop functioning as soon as the first archaic syllable crossed his lips.

No matter what you might choose to believe, I had nothing whatsoever to do with his choice of a bride.
That
decision was dictated almost entirely by politics. Alliances between equals are almost always cemented by marriages. The bride’s name was Mayasarell – one of those concocted names usually arrived at by mashing the names of several dead relatives together – and she was a lovely, dark-haired girl. She and Alleran were not exactly desperately in love with each other, but they got along fairly well, and that’s a reasonable basis for a good marriage, I suppose.

The years continued their stately, ordered pace, and the annual meetings of ‘the Arendish Council’ at the Great Fair gave me plenty of opportunity to head off assorted idiocies before they got completely out of hand.

I think it was after the council meeting in 2324 that I made one of my periodic surveys of the land of the Arends. It was not so much that I distrusted the information I was receiving, but it’s always a good idea to have a look for
yourself in these matters, so Killane and I joined the party of Duke Corrolin of Mimbre and rode on down to the golden city on the banks of the River Arend.

I found nothing particularly alarming in Vo Mimbre, so after a week or so, Killane and I left to go on to Vo Mandor to look in on Mandorin and Asrana.

It was on the morning of our second day out when Killane and I had a conversation that was becoming increasingly necessary.

It wasn’t long after sunrise, and my seneschal and I had ridden up a fairly steep hill, and we stopped at the top to rest our horses in the golden morning sunlight.

‘Meanin’ no offense, Lady-O,’ Killane said a bit hesitantly, ‘but could we be after havin’ a bit of a chat?’

‘Of course. You look troubled, Killane. What’s bothering you?’

‘I’m not th’ cleverest man in all th’ world, me Lady,’ he said, ‘but a man would have t’ be an absolute dunce not t’ see that y’ ain’t exactly ordinary.’

‘Why, thank you, Killane.’ I smiled. ‘Go ahead and say it, my friend. I won’t be the least bit offended.’

‘They call y’ Polgara th’ Sorceress,’ he blurted. ‘Is that a true fact?’

‘The “Sorceress” part of it’s been blown all out of proportion,’ I replied, ‘but, yes, my name
is
Polgara, and I
do
have certain abilities that aren’t very common.’

‘An’ yer father’s name is Belgarath?’

I sighed. ‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

‘An’ yer quite a bit older than y’ look?’

‘I certainly hope that the years aren’t showing.’

‘Yer a thousand years old, aren’t y’?’ He blurted that out almost accusingly.

‘No, dear heart,’ I said patiently. Three hundred and twenty-four, actually.’

He swallowed very hard, and his eyes got sort of wild.

‘Does it really matter so much, Killane?’ I asked him. ‘Longevity’s really nothing more than a family trait. Some people live longer than others, that’s all. You’ve seen that yourself, I’m sure.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so, but
three hundred years’.’

‘I’ll say it again. Does it really matter? Our friendship’s what matters, isn’t it? You’re my true and faithful friend. That’s all that matters to me, and that’s all that should really matter to you. Don’t let something as silly as numbers destroy our friendship.’

‘I’d sooner cut off me right hand,’ he declared.

‘Well, stop worrying about it, then.’

‘Kin y’ really an’ truly perform magic?’ His tone was almost boyish, and his expression seemed filled with anticipation.

‘If that’s what you want to call it, yes.’

‘Do somethin’ magical,’ he urged me, his eyes alight.

‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed. ‘All right, Killane, but if I do a few tricks for you, can we drop this silly conversation?’

He nodded eagerly.

I translocated myself to a spot some distance behind him, and he sat on his horse, gaping at my suddenly empty saddle.

‘I’m over here, Killane,’ I advised him calmly.

He turned, his expression almost frightened.

I gestured at a nearby boulder, focusing my Will. Then I released it, and the boulder rose to hover about ten feet in the air.

Killane started visibly when I dropped it with a thud.

‘This has always been my favorite,’ I told him, and I rather slowly blurred into the form of the snowy white owl. I circled about him for a few moments, gently brushing his face with my soft wing-feathers. Then I resumed my own form and climbed back up on to my horse. ‘Satisfied?’ I asked my trembling friend.

‘More than satisfied, me Lady,’ he assured me. ‘ ‘Twas a wondrous thing t’ behold.’

‘I’m glad you liked it. Now, shall we go on to Vo Mandor? If we hurry right along, we should make it by suppertime.’

Earl Mangaran died the following spring, and I rushed to Vo Astur to examine his newly entombed body. I wanted to be certain that Asrana’s simple solution to the problem of inconvenient people hadn’t also occurred to others. My examination of my friend’s body, however, revealed that he had died of natural causes.

Olburton, the wastrel who was Mangaran’s heir, had assumed authority in Vo Astur, but most of the rest of Asturia was under the control of Nerasin, Duke Oldoran’s nephew. The legalities of the situation were extremely murky. Oldoran had never actually been stripped of his crown, and Mangaran’s tenure in Vo Astur had been, from a strictly legal point of view, no more than a regency. The choice between Nerasin and Olburton wasn’t really much of a choice, so I kept my nose out of it. My job was to keep the three duchies at peace, and if the Asturians chose to embroil themselves in a generation or so of internal strife, that was their business, not mine.

I took some precautions, though. At my suggestion, Kathandrion and Corrolin met quietly at Vo Mandor to cement an alliance designed to keep the Asturian conflagration from spreading.

‘What is thine advice here, Lady Polgara?’ Kathandrion asked me once we’d all gathered in Mandorin’s blue-carpeted study. ‘Duke Corrolin and I could quite easily move into Asturia, dispose of both nephews and put someone to our liking on the throne in Vo Astur.’

‘That’s a very bad idea, Kathandrion. If the Asturians want to hate each other, that’s
their
affair. If you and Corrolin take a hand in things, all you’ll succeed in doing is uniting the Asturians, and they’ll come crashing out of their forest to re-ignite the civil war Ctuchik was trying so hard to keep burning. Just close the borders of Asturia and let
them fight it out among themselves. Eventually, someone who’s strong enough is going to come along and re-unite them, and then I’ll go to Vo Astur and persuade that fellow that it’s in his best interests to go along with the idea that peace is better than war.’

‘Persuade?’ Asrana asked mildly.

‘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 looks 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 cata
pult 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.