The Belgariad, Vol. 2 (20 page)

"No. You'll try to break my head."

There was a sudden sound of scuffling and several heavy blows. "Now get up and move your gear like I told you to," the teamster said. "I don't have all day to stand around and argue with you."

"You hit me when I wasn't looking," the soldier complained.
"Do you want to watch the next one coming?"

"All right, don't get excited. I'm moving it."

"I'm glad we understand each other."

"Does that sort of thing happen very often?" Ce'Nedra asked quietly.

Torasin, grinning broadly, nodded. "Some of your troops feel the need to bluster, your Majesty," he replied, "and the Sendarian wagoneers usually don't have the time to listen. Fistfights and streetbrawling are second nature to those fellows, so their squabbles with the soldiers almost always end up the same way. It's very educational, really."

"Men!" Ce'Nedra said.

In the camp of the Sendars they met Durnik. With him there was an oddly matched pair of young men.

"A couple of old friends," Durnik said as he introduced them. "Just arrived on the supply barges. I think you've met Rundorig, Princess. He was at Faldor's farm when we visited there last winter."

Ce'Nedra did in fact remember Rundorig. The tall, hulking young man, she recalled, was the one who was going to marry Garion's childhood sweetheart, Zubrette. She greeted him warmly and gently reminded him that they had met before. Rundorig's Arendish background made his mind move rather slowly. His companion, however, was anything but slow. Durnik introduced him as Doroon, another of Garion's boyhood friends. Doroon was a small, wiry young man with a protruding Adam's apple and slightly bulging eyes. After a few moments of shyness, his tongue began to run away with him. It was a bit hard to follow Doroon. His mind flitted from idea to idea, and his mouth raced along breathlessly, trying to keep up.

"It was sort of rough going up in the mountains, your Ladyship," he replied in answer to her question about their trip from Sendaria, "what with how steep the road was and all. You'd think that as long as the Tolnedrans were building a highway, they'd have picked leveler ground - but they seem to be fascinated by straight lines - only that's not always the easiest way. I wonder why they're like that." The fact that Ce'Nedra herself was Tolnedran seemed not to have registered on Doroon.

"You came along the Great North Road?" she asked him.

"Yes - until we got to a place called Aldurford. That's a funny kind of name, isn't it? Although it makes sense if you stop and think about it. But that was after we got out of the mountains where the Murgos attacked us. You've never seen such a fight."

"Murgos?" Ce'Nedra asked him sharply, trying to pin down his skittering thoughts.

He nodded eagerly. "The man who was in charge of the wagons - he's a great big fellow from Muros, I think he said - wasn't it Muros he said he came from, Rundorig? Or maybe it was Camaar - for some reason I always get the two mixed up. What was I talking about?"

"The Murgos," Durnik supplied helpfully.

"Oh, yes. Anyway, the man in charge of the wagons said that there had been a lot of Murgos in Sendaria before the war. They pretended that they were merchants, but they weren't - they were spies. When the war started, they all went up into the mountains, and now they come out of the woods and try to ambush our supply wagons - but we were ready for them, weren't we Rundorig? Rundorig hit one of the Murgos with a big stick when the Murgo rode past our wagon - knocked him clear off his horse. Whack! Just like that!

Knocked him clear off his horse. I'll bet he was surprised." Doroon laughed a short little laugh, and then his tongue raced off again, describing in jerky, helter-skelter detail the trip from Sendaria.

Princess Ce'Nedra was strangely touched by her meeting with Garion's two old friends. She felt, moreover,
a tremendous burden of responsibility as she realized that she had reached into almost every life in the west with her campaign. She had separated husbands from their wives and fathers from their children; and she had carried simple men, who had never been further than the next village, a thousand leagues and more to fight in a war they probably did not even begin to understand.

The next morning the leaders of the army rode the few remaining leagues to the installations at the base of the escarpment. As they topped a rise, Ce'Nedra reined Noble in sharply and gaped in openmouthed astonishment as she saw the eastern escarpment for the first time. It was impossible! Nothing could be so vast! The great black cliff reared itself above them like an enormous wave of rock, frozen and forever marking the boundary between east and west, and seemingly blocking any possibility of ever passing in either direction. It immediately stood as a kind of stark symbol of the division between the two parts of the world - a division that could no more be resolved than that enormous cliff could be leveled.

As they rode closer, Ce'Nedra noted a great deal of bustling activity both at the foot of the escarpment and along its upper rim. Great hawsers stretched down from overhead, and Ce'Nedra saw elaborately intertwined pulleys along the foot of the huge cliffs.

"Why are the pulleys at the bottom?" King Anheg demanded suspiciously.

King Rhodar shrugged. "How should I know? I'm not an engineer."

"All right, if you're going to be that way about it, I'm not going to let your people touch a single one of my ships until somebody tells me why the pulleys are down here instead of up there."

King Rhodar sighed and beckoned to an engineer who was meticulously greasing a huge pulley block.

"Have you got a sketch of the rigging handy?" the portly monarch asked the grease-spattered workman.

The engineer nodded, pulled a rolled sheet of grimy parchment out from under his tunic, and handed it to his king. Rhodar glanced at it and handed it to Anheg.

Anheg stared at the complex drawing, struggling to trace out which line went where, and more importantly why it went there. "I can't read this," he complained.

"Neither can I," Rhodar told him pleasantly, "but you wanted to know why the pulleys are down here instead of up there. The drawing tells you why."

"But I can't read it."

"That's not my fault."

Not far away a cheer went up as a boulder half the size of a house and entwined in a nest of ropes rose majestically up the face of the cliff to the accompaniment of a vast creaking of hawsers.

"You'll have to admit that that's impressive, Anheg," Rhodar said. "Particularly when you note that the entire rock is being lifted by those eight horses over there - with the help of that counterweight, of course."

He pointed at another block of stone which was just as majestically coming down from the top of the escarpment.

Anheg squinted at the two rocks. "Durnik," he said over his shoulder, "do you understand how all those work?"

"Yes, King Anheg," the smith replied. "You see, the counterweight off balances the-"

"Don't explain it to me, please," Anheg said. "As long as somebody I know and trust understands, that's all that's really important."

Later that same day, the first Cherek ship was lifted to the top of the escarpment. King Anheg watched the
procedure for a moment or two, then winced and turned his back. "It's unnatural," he muttered to Barak.

"You've taken to using that expression a great deal lately," Barak noted.

Anheg scowled at his cousin.

"I just mentioned it, that's all," Barak said innocently.

"I don't like changes, Barak. They make me nervous."

"The world moves on, Anheg. Things change every day."

"That doesn't necessarily mean that I have to like it," the King of Cherek growled. "I think I'll go to my tent for a drink or two."

"Want some company?" Barak offered.

"I thought you wanted to stand around and watch the world change."

"It can do that without my supervision."

"And probably will," Anheg added moodily. "All right, let's go. I don't want to watch this anymore." And the two of them went off in search of something to drink.

MAYASERANA, QUEEN OF Arendia, was in a pensive mood. She sat at her embroidery in the large, sunny nursery high in the palace at Vo Mimbre. Her infant son, the crown prince of Arendia, cooed and gurgled in his cradle as he played with the string of brightly colored beads that had been the ostensible gift of the crown prince of Drasnia. Mayaserana had never met Queen Porenn, but the shared experience of motherhood made her feel very close to the reputedly exquisite little blonde on her far northern throne.

Seated in a chair not far from the queen sat Nerina, Baroness of Vo Ebor. Each lady wore velvet, the queen in deep purple, and the Baroness in pale blue, and each wore the high, conical white head-dress so admired by the Mimbrate nobility. At the far end of the nursery, an elderly lutanist softly played a mournful air in a minor key.

The Baroness Nerina appeared to be even more melancholy than her queen. The circles beneath her eyes had grown deeper and deeper in the weeks since the departure of the Mimbrate knights, and she seldom smiled. Finally she sighed and laid aside her embroidery.

"The sadness of thy heart doth resound in thy sighing, Nerina," the queen said gently. "Think not so of dangers and separation, lest thy spirits fail thee utterly."

"Instruct me in the art of banishing care, Highness," Nerina replied, "for I am in sore need of such teaching.

My heart is bowed beneath a burden of concern, and try though I might to control them, my thoughts, like unruly children, return ever to the dreadful peril of my absent lord and our dearest friend."

"Be comforted in the knowledge that thy burden is shared by every lady in all of Mimbre, Nerina."

Nerina sighed again. "My care, however, lies in more mournful certainty. Other ladies, their affections firm-fixed on one beloved, can dare to hope that he might return from dreadful war unscathed; but I, who love two, can find no reason for such optimism. I must needs lose one at the least, and the prospect doth crush
my soul."

There was a quiet dignity in Nerina's open acceptance of the implications of the two loves that had become so entwined in her heart that they could no longer be separated. Mayaserana, in one of those brief flashes of insight which so sharply illuminated understanding, perceived that Nerina's divided heart lay at the very core of the tragedy that had lifted her, her husband, and Sir Mandorallen into the realms of sad legend. If Nerina could but love one more than the other, the tragedy would end, but so perfectly balanced was her love for her husband with her love for Sir Mandorallen that she had reached a point of absolute stasis, forever frozen between the two of them.

The queen sighed. Nerina's divided heart seemed somehow a symbol of divided Arendia, but, though the gentle heart of the suffering baroness might never be made one, Mayaserana was resolved to make a last effort to heal the breach between Mimbre and Asturia. To that end, she had summoned to the palace a deputation of the more stable leaders of the rebellious north, and her summons had appeared over a title she rarely used, Duchess of Asturia. At her instruction, the Asturians were even now drawing up a list of their grievances for her consideration.

Later on that same sunny afternoon, Mayaserana sat alone on the double throne of Arendia, painfully aware of the vacancy beside her. The leader and spokesman of the group of Asturian noblemen was a Count Reldegen, a tall, thin man with iron gray hair and beard, who walked with the aid of a stout cane. Reldegen wore a rich green doublet and black hose, and, like the rest of the deputation, his sword was belted at his side. The fact that the Asturians came armed into the queen's presence had stirred some angry muttering, but Mayaserana had refused to listen to urgings that their weapons be taken from them.

"My Lord Reldegen," the queen greeted the Asturian as he limped toward the throne.

"Your Grace," he replied with a bow.

"Your Majesty, " a Mimbrate courtier corrected him in a shocked voice.

"Her Grace summoned us as the Duchess of Asturia," Reldegen informed the courtier coolly. "That title commands more respect from us than other, more recent embellishments."

"Gentlemen, please," the queen said firmly. "Prithee, let us not commence hostilities anew. Our purpose here is to examine the possibilities of peace. I entreat thee, my Lord Reldegen, speak to the purpose.

Unburden thyself of the causes of that rancor which hath so hardened the heart of Asturia. Speak freely, my Lord, and with no fear of reprisal for thy words." She looked quite sternly at her advisers. "It is our command that no man be taken to task for what is spoken here."

The Mimbrates glowered at the Asturians, and the Asturians scowled back.

"Your Grace," Reldegen began, "our chief complaint lies, I think, in the simple fact that our Mimbrate overlords refuse to recognize our titles. A title's an empty thing, really, but it implies a responsibility which has been denied to us. Most of us here are indifferent to the privileges of rank, but we keenly feel the frustration of being refused the chance to discharge our obligations. Our most talented men are compelled to waste their lives in idleness, and might I point out, your Grace, that the loss of that talent injures Arendia even more than it injures us."

"Well spoken, my Lord," the queen murmured.

"Might I respond, your Majesty," the aged, white-bearded Baron of Vo Serin inquired.

"Certainly, my Lord," Mayaserana replied. "Let us all be free and open with one another."

"The titles of the Asturian gentlemen are theirs for the asking," the baron declared. "For five centuries the crown hath awaited but the required oath of fealty to bestow them. No title may be granted or recognized
until its owner swears allegiance to the crown."

"Unfortunately, my Lord," Reldegen said, "we are unable to so swear. The oaths of our ancestors to the Duke of Asturia are still in force, and we are still bound by them."

"The Asturian Duke of whom thou speakest died five hundred years ago," the old baron reminded him.