“This isn’t natural, Belgarath. A Murgo king wouldn’t be interested
enough in what’s happening in Mallorea to take all that much trouble.
There’s a whole ocean between the two countries.
Some event’s about to happen, isn’t it? The reports I’ve been getting
are raising a strong odor of something momentous in the wind.”
There wasn’t really any point in trying to hide things from Rhodar.
His spies were too good, and his mind was too quick.
“Why don’t we just say that we’re living in interesting times and let
it go at that, Rhodar?” I suggested.
“You deal with the ordinary world and let me take care of the other
one.”
“Is there going to be a war involved? If so, I’d better start
recruiting more men for my army.”
“That’d be premature, and don’t be too obvious about going to a war
footing. Concentrate on this enmity between the Murgos and the
Malloreans instead. If it does get down to a war, I don’t want the
Angaraks to be all cozy with each other.” Then I changed the
subject.
“When are you going to get married?”
“Not for a while yet.” His tone was evasive and his expression
slightly embarrassed. Now that I think back on it, I’m almost certain
that he already had his eye on Porenn, who was only about thirteen at
the time, as I recall.
I went on to Val Alorn and from there to the Isle of the Winds. I
didn’t really have any specific reasons for those trips, but I always
like to keep an eye on the Alorns. They have a tendency to get into
trouble if you don’t watch them rather closely.
Then, in 5349, my grandson Darral was killed by a rock slide in the
quarry where he worked, and I rushed back to Annath. There wasn’t
anything I could do about it, of course, but I went all the same. A
death in the family’s not the sort of thing you just let slide, and
Polgara’s always taken these things very hard. You’d think Pol and I
would have grown philosophical about the notion of human mortality by
now, but we hadn’t.
I’d loved Darral, naturally. He was my grandson, after all, but I’d
steeled myself to the idea that one day he’d grow old and die. It
happens, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Polgara, however,
isn’t temperamentally equipped to take this sort of thing
philosophically. She always seems to take the death of a loved one as
a personal insult of some kind. Maybe her medical studies have had
something to do with that. For a physician, death is the ultimate
enemy.
I tried to console her with the usual platitudes, but she wanted no
part of that.
“Just go away and leave me alone, father,” she told me flatly.
“I’ll deal with this in my own way.”
So I went on down the street to talk with Geran.
“What really happened?”
I asked him.
“There must have been some hidden flaw in that rock-face,
grandfather,”
he replied somberly.
“Father and I had both checked it from top to bottom. It seemed
completely sound, and there hadn’t been any hints of weakness. The
workmen were cutting blocks off the top of the face, and the whole
thing just gave way and collapsed. Father was down in the quarry at
the bottom of the face, and there was no way he could get out from
under it when it came down.” His face grew angry, and he slammed his
fist down on the table.
“There was no reason for it, grandfather! That face should not have
broken away! I’m going to tear that mountain apart until I find out
why it happened!”
I know now why it happened–and who was responsible. That’s one of the
reasons that I take an enormous satisfaction in what Garion did to
Chamdar down in the Wood of the Dryads.
Polgara remained inconsolable. There was nothing I could do or say to
comfort her. She locked herself in her room and refused to talk to any
of us. For a time I was about half afraid that she would go mad with
grief.
Darral’s wife did.
It wasn’t too obvious at first. After her initial outburst of grief,
she seemed to grow abnormally calm. Two weeks after the funeral, she
went back to her normal routine of cleaning house, sweeping off her
doorstep, and preparing meals as if nothing had happened. Quite
frequently, she even sang while she was cooking.
I’m sure that there are people out there who’ll say that this is a
healthy way to deal with grief, but they’re wrong. The death of a wife
or husband is a wound that takes years to heal. Believe me, I know. If
my own grief hadn’t been so profound, I’d have recognized the fact that
something wasn’t right.
Alara cooked the usual meals, and she always set a place for Darral at
her table. Then, as evening descended, she’d keep going to the door to
look out anxiously into Annath’s single street as if she were waiting
for someone to come home to supper. The signs of her madness were all
there. I can’t believe that Pol and I missed them.
If I’d been just a bit more alert, I’d have realized who’d been
responsible for Darral’s death and Alara’s madness. At that point, I’d
have torn the world apart looking for Asharak the Murgo, and when I
caught him I’d have cut his throat all the way back to the neck
bone–with a dull saw. It might have taken me awhile, but I’d have
enjoyed every minute of it.
Of course I’m a savage. Haven’t you realized that yet?
I’m not saying here that Alara went stark-staring mad. She just got
vague –which is probably even worse, when you get right down to it. As
Polgara recovered from her own sorrow, she was obliged to keep a more
or less continual watch over Alara, and that turned out to be fairly
significant as time went on, I took my own sorrow out on the road.
Walking thirty miles a day or so will numb almost any emotion, and I
definitely didn’t think that a return to the waterfront dives of Camaar
would have been a good idea right then. I drifted back to the Vale in
the last spring of 5351, and Javelin was there, waiting for me.
“We lost him, Ancient One,” he confessed with a certain degree of
shame.
“I’ve had people watching him from every possible angle, and one day he
simply wasn’t there any more. Chamdar’s a Murgo, and they’re not
supposed to be that clever.”
“He’s deceptive, Khendon.” I sighed.
“It looks as if I’m going to have to put on my walking shoes again. I’d
better go find him.”
“Aren’t you getting a little old for this kind of thing, Holy One?” he
asked me with surprising directness.
“Keeping track of Chamdar was my job. Why don’t you let me locate
him?”
“I may be old. Javelin, but I can still run you into the ground any
day in the week. Just don’t get in my way. If you do, I’ll run right
up your back.” I hate having people make an issue of my age. Don’t
they realize by now that it doesn’t mean anything?
“It shall be as you say, Ancient One,” he replied with a curt bow. At
least he had sense enough to know when to back away.
I went directly to Tol Honeth to take up the search. As closely as the
twins were able to determine, we were within a couple of years of the
birth of the Godslayer, and I vividly remembered Chamdar’s audible
ruminations back when Gelane had fallen in with the Bear-cult. Ctuchik
had ordered his Grolim underling to kill Iron-grip’s heir, but Chamdar
had come up with an alternative to that. He was looking for the chance
to be elevated to disciple status and thus to step over Ctuchik to
deliver the Godslayer and the Orb directly to Torak. He was ambitious,
I’ll give him that. I quite literally tore Tolnedra apart, but I
couldn’t put my hands on him. He’d stolen a page out of my own book
and had laid down various hints and false clues that kept me running
from one end of Tolnedra to the other. I didn’t find out exactly how
he’d done it until after the tragedy in Annath.
Leildorin, the Archer mentioned in the Mrin, was born in 5352, but I
didn’t have time to look in on the Wildantor family, since I was too
busy ripping up the paving stones in Tol Honeth looking for my elusive
Grolim adversary. After a while I started to get irritable.
Javelin returned to Tol Honeth to help me, and he shrewdly prevailed on
the Drasnian Ambassador to try to enlist the aid of Ce’Nedra’s father
in the search. Tolnedran intelligence isn’t really a match for what