his heart.
“What are you doingT’ Chamdar’s voice was shrill.
Gelane answered with his fist. He struck Ctuchik’s underling with a
blow that would have felled an ox.
I’ve speculated any number of times about how the course of history
might have been changed if Gelane had been carrying an axe that
night.
In the long run, though, I guess the fact that he wasn’t worked out for
the best.
Chamdar reeled back, his eyes glazed and his Will evaporating. He fell
heavily to the ground, and the pair of pseudo-Alorns from Ashaba
immediately jumped in to protect their employer. I was just about to
take steps, but the other cultists beat me to it. They’d sworn fealty
to Gelane, and that’s a religious obligation in the Bear-cult. They
swarmed all over the two Dagashi. The confusion, however, gave Chamdar
time to recover his senses and make good his escape. He trans located
himself to the edge of the grove, took wing, and flew off into the
night.
“We’ve been tricked!” Gelane roared.
“That was no Priest of Belar!”
“What are we to do, Godslayer?” a cultist demanded in a helpless
voice.
“Don’t ever call me that again!” Gelane screamed at him.
“I’m not the Godslayer! This was all a trick! I’ve dishonored my
name!” He tore off his bearskin tunic and threw it into the fire.
“The Bear-cult is a lie and a deception! I’ll have no further part in
it!”
“Let’s find that false priest and kill him!” one big fellow shouted,
and, since they were Alorns, they tried to do that. They floundered
around in the woods for a half an hour or so, but Chamdar was miles
away by then.
Finally they gave up and returned to the fire.
“What do we do now, your Majesty?” the big Alorn demanded.
“First off, we’ll all forget about that “your Majesty” business,”
Gelane replied.
“I’m not the Rivan King, so don’t any of you ever call me that again.”
He straightened.
“I’ll have your oaths on that. No word of this must ever leak out.
From now on, I’m just Gelane the cooper, and nothing else. Will you
swear?”
Naturally they swore. What else could they do?
“Now go home to your families!” he commanded.
“Get rid of those stinking bearskins, go back to your lives, and forget
that any of this ever happened.”
“What about that Grolim?” the big belligerent fellow demanded.
“The one who pretended to be the Priest of Belar?”
“My family will deal with him,” Gelane replied.
“Now go home.”
And then, when they were all gone, Iron-grip’s heir fell facedown on
the ground, weeping uncontrollably in shame and remorse.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Now that Gelane had recovered his senses, he was so overcome with guilt
that he was virtually incoherent.
“How could I have been so foolish, grandfather?” he wept.
“I’m unworthy!
I’m unfit to bear my name! I’ve betrayed everything we stand for!”
“Oh, stop that!” I told him.
“It doesn’t accomplish a thing.”
“Who was that man, grandfather?”
“His name’s Chamdar, and he’s a Grolim priest. Couldn’t you tell from
the shape of his eyes that he’s an Angarak?”
“This is Sendaria, father,” Polgara told me.
“People don’t pay that much attention to race here.”
“Perhaps, but Gelane should have realized that somebody with an Angarak
heritage couldn’t possibly be a Priest of Belar.” I looked rather
sternly at my grandson.
“How did he get such a hold on you, Gelane?” I demanded.
“Flattery,” he replied in a tone of self-contempt.
“Sometimes I wish that Aunt Pol had never told me about who I really
am. That’s what made it so easy for that Grolim to get his hands on my
soul.”
“What’s your identity got to do with it?” I demanded.
“I’m not really a very important person here in Seline, grandfather.
People who come into my shop to buy barrels treat me like some kind of
servant. Back during the war, when Mother and Aunt Pol and I were at
the Stronghold and Kal Torak was besieging the place, some of the
people there treated me with a great deal of respect because they knew
that I was really the Rivan King. Here in Seline, I’m just another
tradesman. Who respects a barrel-maker? When some brewer or wine
merchant starts putting on airs, I sort of wrap myself in my real
identity. It keeps me from feeling small and insignificant. That’s
how the Grolim captured me.”
“You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“He already knew. He came into my shop one day, and he bowed to me and
hailed me as the Rivan King. He told me that he was a Priest of Belar
and that the auguries had told him who I really was. Nobody’d called
me “your Majesty” since we all left the Stronghold, and it went to my
head.”
“That’s the way it usually works, Gelane,” I told him.
“More people have been tripped up by their own hubris than you could
possibly imagine.”
“Hubris?”
“Overweening pride. It’s when you get so impressed with yourself that
your head stops working. That little speech you were making here this
evening was a fair indication of it. You’re not the first to be
infected with it, and you probably won’t be the last. How did Chamdar
get you involved with the Bear-cult?”
“He worked his way up to it gradually. At first all he talked about
was how I ought to go to Riva to claim my throne. He said that all of
Aloria was waiting for me.”
“That’s probably true, Gelane,” Pol told him, “but Aloria doesn’t know
that it’s waiting. We’ve kept your family fairly well hidden for a
long time now.”
“He seemed to know all about it.”
“Naturally,” I replied.
“The Grolims have prophecies of their own.
We’ve been able to hide you, but we couldn’t keep your existence a
secret.
Chamdar’s been tearing the world apart looking for your family for
about three centuries.”
“I’ll kill him!” Gelane said fiercely, stretching forth his hands in a
hungry sort of gesture.
“No,” I disagreed, “actually you won’t. That’s my job, not yours. Your
job is to stay out of sight. What you’re going to do right now is go
back to town and start packing. You’re going to take your wife and
your mother and go down the deepest hole your Aunt and I can find for
you.” I thought about it for a moment.
“Val Alorn, I think.”
“You’re not serious!” Pol objected.
“Val Alorn isn’t so bad, Pol, and Chamdar can’t hide his race from the
Chereks the way he hid it from the Sendars. Chereks are usually blond,
and with that black beard and those funny-shaped eyes, Chamdar’d
definitely stick out on the streets of Val Alorn. King Eldrig’s got a
standing reward for the head of any Angarak found in his kingdom.
It’s a sizable amount of money, and that encourages the Chereks to keep
their eyes open for foreigners. I’ll have a talk with Eldrig, and
we’ll pick some village where no veterans of the war in Arendia
live.”
Gelane looked puzzled.
“Your grandfather and I were a little conspicuous at Vo Mimbre,
Gelane,” Pol explained.
“Someone who’d been there might recognize me, and Chereks talk too much
when they get drunk–which happens almost every night, I’ve noticed.”
“Let’s go back a bit here,” I said to Gelane.
“Exactly how did Chamdar enlist you in the Bear-cult?”
“He started out by warning me that I have to be very careful, because
there are all sorts of people looking for me, and they don’t all look
like Angaraks. He said that the only people I can really trust are
Alorns. Then he said that there was a religious order in the Alorn
kingdoms that’s sworn to protect me and to see to it that I can take my
rightful place on the throne in the Hall of the Rivan King. My head
was so swollen up by then that I even made it easy for him. I said
that I wanted to meet these people who were so devoted to me, but he
told me that Bear-cultists are forbidden to reveal their affiliation
with the cult to anybody who wasn’t a member. Would you believe that I
actually volunteered to join at that point?”
“He led you into it rather carefully, Gelane,” I replied.
“Every time you accepted something he told you, his hold on you grew
stronger.
Grolims are very good at that. By the time you volunteered to join the
cult, he’d have been able to get you to do almost anything.”
“Were the other Alorns from Seline really cult members?”
“They probably thought they were, but I doubt that any real cultists
even knew that they existed. The cult doesn’t have much of a following
here in Sendaria. This little group in Seline was living in a vacuum,
totally isolated from the rest of the cult, and I’d imagine that