imagine. I’ll talk it over with him when I get to Val Alorn. Then
I’ll go talk with the Drasnians and the Algars. I think we might want
them to go overland while you and Valcor sail south. I want to come at
Nyissa from both sides. We’ll probably all get there about
midsummer.”
“Good time for a war,” he noted bleakly.
“No, Brand. There’s no good time for a war. This one’s necessary,
though. Salmissra needs to be persuaded to keep her nose out of things
that don’t concern her.”
“You seem to be taking this very calmly.” It was almost an
accusation.
“Appearances can be deceiving. I can get angry later. Right now I’ve
got to map out this campaign.”
“Will you be coming down with Valcor?”
“I haven’t exactly decided yet. In any case, we’ll all get together
again in Sthiss Tor.”
“See you there, then.” He went over and dropped to one knee in front
of Geran.
“I don’t think we’ll see each other again, your Majesty,”
he said sadly.
“Goodbye.”
The little boy was red-eyed from weeping, but he straightened and
looked his Warder full in the face.
“Good-bye, Brand,” he said.
“I know I can count on you to take care of my people and to guard the
Orb.” He was a brave little boy, and he’d have made a good king if
things had turned out differently.
Brand rose, saluted, and started off down the beach.
“Are you going back to your mother’s cottage?” I asked Pol.
“I don’t think so, father. Zedar knows where it is, and I’m sure he’s
told Torak about it. I don’t want visitors showing up when I’m not
expecting them. I still have that manor house at Erat. That should be
safe enough until you get back from Nyissa.”
“You haven’t been there for a long time, Pol,” I objected.
“The house probably collapsed years ago.”
“No, father. I asked it not to.”
“Sendaria’s a different country now, Pol, and the Sendars don’t even
remember the Wacite Arends. An abandoned house almost invites somebody
to move in.”
She shook her head.
“The Sendars don’t even know it’s there. My roses have seen to
that.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You wouldn’t believe how big a rosebush can get if you encourage it
just a bit, and I had lots of roses planted around the house. Trust
me, father. The house is still there, but no one’s seen it since the
fall of Vo Wacune. The boy and I’ll be safe there.”
“Well, maybe–for the time being, anyway. We’ll come up with something
else after I’ve dealt with Salmissra.”
“If it’s safe, why move him?”
“Because the line has to be continued, Pol. That means he has to get
married and produce a son. We might have a little trouble persuading
some girl to break through a rose thicket to get to him.”
“Are you leaving now, grandfather?” Geran asked me, his small face
very serious. For some reason all of those little boys have called me
that. I think it’s in their blood.
“Yes, Geran,” I told him.
“You’ll be safe with your Aunt Pol. There’s something I have to attend
to.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to wait a little while?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I’d sort of like to go along, but I’m too little right now. If you
could wait a few years, I’ll be old enough to kill Salmissra myself.”
He was an Alorn, all right.
“No, Geran. I’d better take care of it for you. Salmissra might die
of natural causes before you grow up, and we wouldn’t want that, would
we?”
He sighed.
“No, I suppose not,” he agreed reluctantly.
“Would you hit her once or twice for me, grandfather?”
“You have my absolute word on that, boy.”
“Hard,” he added fiercely.
“Men!” Polgara muttered.
“I’ll keep in touch, Pol,” I promised her.
“Now get off this beach.
There might be more Nyissans lurking about.”
And so Polgara took the grieving little prince up past Lake Sulturn
toward Medalia and Erat, and I changed form once again and flew due
north toward Val Alorn.
In the hundred and seventy-five years or so since Ran Horb II had
founded the kingdom of Sendaria and a former rutabaga farmer named
Fundor had been elevated to the throne, the Sendars had been
busy-mostly cutting down trees. I don’t entirely approve of that. The
notion of killing something that’s been alive for a thousand years just
so you can plant turnips seems a little immoral to me. Sendars,
however, are compulsively neat, and they just adore straight lines. If
the Sendars start building a road and a mountain gets in their way, the
notion of going around it never occurs to them. They’ll cut through it
instead. The Tolnedrans tend to be the same way. I suppose it stands
to reason, though. The Sendars are a peculiar mixture of all races, so
a few Tolnedran characteristics were bound to be a part of their
nature.
Don’t get me wrong here. I like Sendars. They’re a little stuffy
sometimes, but I think they’re the most decent and sensible people in
the world. Their mixed background seems to have purged them of the
obsessions that infect other races.
How did I get off on that? You really shouldn’t let me digress that
way.
We’ll be at this forever if I don’t stick to the point.
Anyway, when you view it from above, the kingdom of Sendaria resembles
nothing quite so much as a checkered tablecloth. I flew over the
capital city of Sendar and continued on toward Lake Seline. Then there
was a cluster of mountains, and Sendaria finally came to an abrupt end
at the Cherek Bore. I won’t repeat the dreadful pun some witty fellow
came up with by playing around with the ambiguity implicit in the word
“bore.”
The tide was rushing out of the Gulf of Cherek when I flew over the
Bore, and the Great Maelstrom was whirling around, joyously trying to
pick boulders up off the bottom. It doesn’t take much to make a
whirlpool happy.
Then I flew along the east coast of the peninsula past Eldrigshaven and
Trellheim, and I finally reached Val Alorn.
Val Alorn had been there for a very long time. I think there was a
village in that general vicinity even before Torak cracked the world
and formed the Gulf of Cherek in the process. The Chereks settled down
to make a real city out of it after I divided Aloria. Bear-shoulders
needed something to keep his mind occupied and off the fact that I’d
just relieved him of most of his kingdom, I guess. To be perfectly
honest about it, I’ve always found Val Alorn to be just a bit on the
bleak side. The sky over the Cherek Peninsula is nearly always cloudy
and grey. Did they have to make their city out of grey rock as well?
I settled to earth just south of the city and went around to the main
gate that faced the harbor. Then I navigated the narrow streets where
piles of dirty snow still lay in the shady places and eventually
reached the palace and was admitted. I found King Valcor carousing
with his earls in the great throne-room. Most of the time the throne
room of the Kingdom of Cherek resembles nothing so much as a beer hall.
Fortunately, I arrived about midday, and Valcor hadn’t had time yet to
drink himself into insensibility. He was boisterous, but there’s
nothing very unusual about that. Chereks, drunk or sober, are always
boisterous.
“Ho, Belgarath!” he bellowed at me from the throne, “come in and join
us!” Valcor was a burly fellow with muddy brown hair and a vast beard.
Like so many overly muscular men I’ve known, he’d gone to flab as
middle age crept up on him. He wasn’t exactly fat, but he was working
on it. Despite the fact that he was the king, he was wearing a peasant
smock with beer-stains down the front.
I walked past the blazing fire pit in the center of the hall and
approached the throne.
“Your Majesty,” I greeted him perfunctorily.
“You and I need to talk.”
“Any time, Belgarath. Pull up a seat and have some beer.”
“Privately, Valcor.”
“I don’t have any secrets from my earls.”
“You will have in just a few minutes. Get up off your behind, Valcor,
and let’s go someplace where we can talk.”
He looked a little startled.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“War does that to me.” I chose the word carefully. It’s one of the
few words that’ll get an Alorn’s attention when he’s been drinking.
“War? Where? With whom?”
“I’ll tell you about it just as soon as we’re alone.”
He stood up and led me to a nearby room.
Valcor’s reaction to the news I brought him was fairly predictable. It
took me a little while to calm him down, but I finally persuaded him to