He had not been drunk before. Aunt Pol had always disapproved of drinking, and, as he did in most things, he had deferred to her opinions about the matter. Thus, he was totally unprepared for the way he felt the next morning.
Ce’Nedra was unsympathetic, to say the very least. Like every woman who had ever lived since the beginning of time, she smugly enjoyed her husband’s suffering. “I told you that you were drinking too much,” she reminded him.
“Please don’t,” he said, holding his head between his hands.
“It’s your own fault,” she smirked.
“Just leave me alone,” he begged. “I’m trying to die.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll die, Garion. You might wish you could, but you won’t.”
“Do you have to talk so loud?”
“We all justloved your singing,” she congratulated him brightly. “I actually think you invented notes that didn’t even exist before.”
Garion groaned and once more buried his face between his trembling hands.
The Alorn Council lasted for perhaps another week. It might have continued longer had not a savage autumn storm announced with a howling gale that it was time for the assembled guests to return to the mainland while the Sea of the Winds was still navigable.
Not too many days later, Brand, the tall, aging Rivan Warder, requested a private audience with Garion. It was raining gustily outside, and sheets of water intermittently clawed at the windows of Garion’s study as the two men sat down in comfortable chairs across the table from each other. “May I speak frankly, Belgarion?” the big, sad-eyed man asked.
“You know you don’t have to ask that.”
“The matter at hand is a personal one. I don’t want you to be offended.”
“Say what you think needs to be said. I promise not to be offended.”
Brand glanced out the window at the gray sky and the wind-driven rain. “Belgarion, it’s been almost eight years now since you married Princess Ce’Nedra.”
Garion nodded.
“I’m not trying to intrude on your privacy, but the fact that your wife has not yet produced an heir to the throne is, after all, a state matter.”
Garion pursed his lips. “I know that you and Anheg and the others are very concerned. I think your concern is premature, though.”
“Eight years is a long time, Belgarion. We all know how much you love your wife. We’re all fond of her.” Brand smiled briefly. “Even though she’s a little difficult at times.”
“You’ve noticed.”
“We followed her willingly to the battlefield at Thull Mardu -and probably would again if she asked us to- but I think we’d better face the possibility that she may be barren.”
“I’m positive that she’s not,” Garion said firmly.
“Then why isn’t she having children?”
Garion couldn’t answer that.
“Belgarion, the fate of this kingdom -and of all Aloria- hangs on your weakest breath. There’s virtually no other topic of conversation in all the northern kingdoms.”
“I didn’t know that,” Garion admitted.
“Grodeg and his henchmen were virtually wiped out at Thull Mardu, but there’s been a resurgence of the Bear-cult in remote parts of Cherek, Drasnia, and Algaria. You knew that, didn’t you?”
Garion nodded.
” And even in the cities there are those elements that sympathize with the cult’s aims and beliefs. Those people were not happy that you chose a Tolnedran princess for your wife. Rumors are already abroad that Ce’Nedra’s inability to have children is a sign of Belar’s disapproval of your marriage to her.”
“That’s superstitious nonsense,” Garion scoffed.
“Of course it is, but if that kind of thinking begins to take hold, it’s ultimately going to have some unpleasant effects. Other elements in Alorn society -friendly to you- are very concerned about it. To put it bluntly, there’s a rather widely held opinion that the time has come for you to divorce Ce’Nedra.”
“What?”
“Youdo have that power, you know. The way they all see it, the best solution might be for you to put aside your barren Tolnedran queen and take some nice, fertile Alorn girl, who’ll present you with babies by the dozen.”
“That’s absolutely out of the question,” Garion said hotly. “I won’t do it. Didn’t those idiots ever hear about the Accords of Vo Mimbre? Even if I wanted to divorce Ce’Nedra, I couldn’t. Our marriage was agreed upon five hundred years ago.”
“The Bear-cult feels that the arrangement was forced on the Alorns by Belgarath and Polgara,” Brand replied. “Since those two are loyal to Aldur, the cult feels that it might have been done without Belar’s approval.”
“Nonsense,” Garion snapped.
“There’s a lot of nonsense in any religion, Belgarion. The point remains, however, that Ce’Nedra has few friends in any part of Alorn society. Even those who are friendly to you aren’t very fond of her. Both your enemiesand your friends would like to see you divorce her. They all know how fond of her you are, so they’ll probably never approach you with the idea. They’re likely to take more direct action instead.”
“Such as?”
“Since they know that you can’t be persuaded to divorce her, someone may try to remove her permanently.”
“They wouldn’t dare!”
“Alorns are almost as emotional as Arends are, Belgarion -and sometimes almost as thick-headed. We’re all aware of it. Anheg and Cho-Hag both urged me to warn you about this possibility, and Porenn has put whole platoons of her spies to work on it so that we’ll at least have some advance warning if someone starts plotting against the queen.”
“And just where do you stand in this, Brand?” Garion asked quietly.
“Belgarion,” the big man said firmly, “I love you as if you were my own son, and Ce’Nedra is as dear to me as the daughter I never had. Nothing in this world would make me happier than to see the floor of that nursery next to your bedroom absolutely littered with children. But it’s been eight years. Things have reached the point where we must do something -if for no other reason, then to protect that tiny, brave girl we both love.”
“What can we do?” Garion asked helplessly.
“You and I are only men, Garion. How canwe know why a woman does or does not have children? And that’s the crux of the whole situation. I implore you, Garion -I beg you- send for Polgara. We need her advice and help -and we need it now.”
After the Warder had quietly left, Garion sat for a long while staring out at the rain. All in all, he decided that it might be wiser not to tell Ce’Nedra about the conversation. He did not want to frighten her with talk of assassins lurking in the dim corridors, and any hint that political expediency might compel consideration of divorce wouldnot be well received. After careful thought, he concluded that the best course would be just to keep his mouth shut and send for Aunt Pol. Unfortunately, he had forgotten something rather important. When he entered the cheery, candlelit royal apartment that evening, he wore a carefully assumed smile designed to indicate that nothing untoward had happened during the day.
The frosty silence which greeted him should have warned him; even had he missed that danger sign, he certainly should have noticed the scars on the door casing and the broken shards of several vases and assorted porcelain figurines that lay in the corners where they had been missed in the hasty clean-up following an explosion of some sort. The Rivan King, however, sometimes tended to be slightly unobservant. “Good evening, dear”‘ he greeted his icy little wife in a cheerful voice.
“Really?”
“How did your day go?”
She turned to regard him with a look filled with daggers. “How can you possibly have the nerve to ask that?”
Garion blinked.
“Tell me,” she said, “just when is it that I am to be put aside so that my Lord can marry the blonde-headed brood sow who’s going to replace me in my Lord’s bed and fill the entire Citadel with litters of runny-nosed Alorn brats?”
“How-?”
“My Lord appears to have forgotten the gift he chained about my neck when we were betrothed,” she said. “My Lord also appears to have forgotten just exactly what Beldaran’s amulet can do.”
“Oh,” Garion said, suddenly remembering. “Oh, my.”
“Unfortunately, the amulet won’t come off,” Ce’Nedra told him bitingly. “You won’t be able to give it to your next wife -unless you plan to have my head cut off so that you can reclaim it.”
“Will
you stop that?”
“As my Lord commands me. Did you plan to ship me back to Tolnedra -or am I just to be shoved out the front gate into the rain and left to fend for myself?”
“You heard the discussion I had with Brand, then, I take it.”
“Obviously.”
“If you heard part of it, then I’m sure you heard it all. Brand was only reporting a danger to you caused by the absurd notions of a group of frothing fanatics.”