friend doesn’t want our minds cluttered up with these things until we
absolutely need to know them. I just hope he isn’t late with the
information when Torak and I get started.”
“Amen to that. Have you got any clues about why the Orb’s set in that
shield now instead of on the hilt of the sword?”
“All I know is that I’m not supposed to hit Torak with it–or with
anything connected to it. Somebody else is going to do that. All I’m
supposed to do is show it to Torak.”
“Show it to him? He’s seen it before. Brand.”
“All right, Belgarath, keep your nose out of it.” I recognized the
voice, of course.
“You do your work and let Brand do his.”
The startled look on Brand’s face clearly showed that he’d also heard
what our friend had just said.
“Does he always talk to you that way?” he asked.
I nodded glumly.
“All the time. There must be something about me that sets his teeth on
edge. I think we’d better get General Cerran off to one side and start
him to thinking about contingency planning.”
“Why not just tell him who you really are? And where we’re getting our
instructions from?”
“No, Brand, not yet. I want him to have his legions at Vo Mimbre
before I spring any surprises on him. Cerran’s a good, solid man, but
he’s still Tolnedran. We’ll tell him that there’ll be a Cherek fleet
at the mouth of the River of the Woods, ‘just in case he needs it.”
He’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
It was spring of 4875 when Torak finally threw up his hands in disgust,
broke off his siege of the Stronghold, and started marching west with
what was left of his army. The Algars and the vengeful Drasnians
harried his rear as he moved westward. There are always stragglers
trailing along behind any army on the march, but in this situation,
those stragglers never caught up with their main force.
When Kal Torak reached Ulgoland, things went even further downhill for
him. Every night the Ulgos came out of their caves like hunting cats
to cut up the sentries posted around the fringes of the Angarak army.
On a number of occasions they even managed to get into the midst of the
encampment to kill large numbers of Torak’s soldiers. Torak tended to
ignore those inconveniences but his troops grew very nervous, and most
of them gave up on sleeping altogether.
The maimed God of Angarak grimly pressed on, taking dreadful casualties
as he went, and eventually he reached the headwaters of the River
Arend.
The Alorn kings and I’d deployed our forces around Vo Mimbre as soon as
the twins advised me that Torak was on the move, and all was in
readiness–except that we didn’t have any Tolnedran Legions.
Torak paused to regroup, but we still had no word of what was happening
in southern Cthol Murgos. If something didn’t happen down there, and
very soon, we were going to have to fight without the aid of the
legions. This wasn’t turning out very well.
Then, late one night when I’d just fallen into a fitful sleep, Beldin’s
voice woke me up again.
“Belgarath!” he chortled.
“You can stop worrying about Urvon! He isn’t going to make it!”
“What happened?”
“The Murgos were cutting his army to pieces, and he wanted some open
ground to fight them off. He went out into the Great Desert of Araga,
and the Murgos followed him.”
“They exterminated each other?” I asked gleefully.
“We, something else did. Is it still raining there?”
“Beldin, it’s been raining almost steadily since 4850. It’s never
going to let up.”
“It probably will now. The reason for it just went through the Desert
of Araga. There’s been a blizzard raging in that wasteland for the
last five days. There are fifteen-foot snowdrifts piled all over the
top of Urvon and the Murgos who were chasing him. Nobody down here is
going to go anyplace. Torak’s going to have to fight you with just the
men he’s got.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I went down the hallway, woke Pol, and passed Beldin’s news on to
her.
“Fortuitous,” she noted, brewing herself a cup of tea. I’ve never
cared that much for tea myself, but Pol had picked up a taste for the
stuff during her years in Vo Wacune.
“I think it goes a little further than that, Pol,” I disagreed.
“The foul weather we’ve endured for the past quarter century was all in
preparation for that blizzard, so we can hardly call it a stroke of
luck. Even then, Urvon wouldn’t have gone out into that waste and got
himself trapped if Ctuchik hadn’t been playing games.”
“How big is that desert?”
“The Great Desert of Araga? It’s about the size of Algaria. There’s
no way Urvon can dig himself out of those snowdrifts in time to make
any difference at Vo Mimbre.”
“Unless Torak decides to stop and wait for him.”
“He can’t. The EVENT has to take place at a specific time.”
“I think we’ve still got a problem, though.”
“Oh? Things seem to be going along rather well from where I sit.”
“Don’t smirk like that, father. We know that Urvon’s bogged down, but
how are we going to convince Ran Borune and General Cerran that he’s no
longer a danger to their southern border? We’re used to these
manipulations of the natural order of things, but they aren’t. This
blizzard doesn’t mean a thing if it doesn’t free up the legions.”
Trust Polgara to take the shine off things. I scowled at the floor for
a few moments.
“We’d better talk with Rhodar,” I decided.
“A dispatch from one of his spies might turn the trick.”
“That ploy’s wearing a bit thin, father. Ran Borune and Cerran both
know that we want the legions at Vo Mimbre. A dispatch that just
“happens” to arrive in the nick of time’s going to make them very
suspicious.
Why not just tell them the truth? Show them your copy of the Mrin and
point out the number of times it’s been right in the past.”
“I don’t think it’ll work, Pol. We might persuade Ran Borune. He’s
seen enough in the past few years to realize that there’s more going on
here than he can explain rationally. But we’ve made such a point of
giving the generals reasonable explanations for things that a sudden
jump into reality’s going to jerk Cerran up short. It’d take months to
persuade him, and we don’t have months. Torak’s marching down the
River Arend toward Vo Mimbre right now, and it’s going to take the
Chereks a while to ferry the legions north to Arendia. Cerran’s
learned that Rhodar’s information’s usually correct. Let’s try it that
way before we jump off into something exotic. I want those legions at
Vo Mimbre, and I don’t have time to educate the Tolnedran General
Staff.”
“This isn’t going to be settled by armies, father. Brand and Torak are
going to fight a duel, and that’s the EVENT we’re waiting for. All
this maneuvering around isn’t anything but preparation.”
“Necessary preparation, Pol. Torak outnumbers us if we don’t have the
legions. He won’t have any reason to accept Brand’s challenge unless
the issue’s in doubt. We’re going to have to bloody his nose a bit
before he’ll even consider coming out of that iron pavilion of his to
engage in single combat with the Child of Light. Torak might be crazy,
but he’s not foolish enough to risk something like that unless we force
him into it.”
“We still have to get past General Cerran.”
“I know. Let’s get Rhodar and go to the palace. We might as well get
started with this.”
As I’d more or less expected, Ran Borune was inclined to accept
Rhodar’s story about a dispatch from the South. The Tolnedran Emperor
was shrewd enough to realize that Pol and I had ways to get information
that he couldn’t fully understand, and as long as we gave him a
graceful way to take what we told him on faith, he was willing to go
along with us.
General Cerran, however, dug in his heels.
“I’m sorry, your Majesty,” he apologized to his emperor, “but I simply
can’t advise leaving our southern border undefended without some
verification of this report. I’m not trying to be offensive, King
Rhodar, but I’m sure you can see my position.
All I’ve got to go on here is an encrypted message that I can’t even
read, from a man I don’t even know. His dispatch might be exaggerated,
or it might be that he was captured and forced to send the message.
Nothing would suit Urvon better than tricking us into pulling the
legions out of the south. If the report’s inaccurate, Urvon could be
camped in the streets of Tol Borune before we could get back into