the Drasnians can come up with, but it would have put more eyes out
there on the streets. Ran Borune XXIII wasn’t having any of that,
though. He was involved in some rather delicate trade negotiations
with the representatives of Taur Urgas, and he wasn’t inclined to do
anything at all to disrupt those negotiations, so he withheld the
services of his assorted spies and informers. I liked Ran Borune, and
I adore his daughter, but he was greedy, and the prospect of getting
his hands on all that red Murgo gold turned his head, so Javelin and I
got no help whatsoever from Tolnedran intelligence.
Finally, in the late summer of 5354, I was ready to give up entirely.
It was obvious by then that the various clues I’d been frantically
chasing up and down the length and breadth of Tolnedra were no more
than false trails. For once Chamdar had outsmarted me. I was
absolutely certain that he wasn’t in Tolnedra any more, so I gave
Javelin the thankless task of chasing down all the fictitious
“Chamdars” that the Grolims were inventing for our entertainment and
took myself off to Arendia.
And the Grolims there were as busy as the ones in Tolnedra had been.
I’ll give Chamdar credit here. He’d learned all the lessons I’d given
him over the centuries very well. I heard stories about Asharak the
Murgo every time I turned around, and the stories got wilder and wilder
every day. Grolims are schemers, to be sure, but there’s no sense of
art in their schemes. They always go to extremes. I think it’s a
racial flaw.
Then, when I was riding north out of Vo Mimbre, I encountered a
handsome young fellow in full armor sitting astride a prancing
warhorse.
I recognized the crest of the Mandor family on his shield.
“Well met, Ancient Belgarath!” Mandorallen greeted me in that booming
voice of his.
“I have been in search of thee!” Mandorallen was only about seventeen
at that time, but there was already an impressive muscularity about
him.
“What is it this time, Mandorallen?” I demanded.
“I have been, as thou doubtless know–for certes, all things are known
to thee–at Vo Ebor, where my dear friend and guardian, the baron of
that fair domain, hath been providing instruction unto me in the
knightly arts, and–” “Mandorallen, get to the point!”
He looked a little injured by that.
“In short,” he said–as if a Mimbrate could ever say anything in short,
“thy brethren Beltira and Belkira came but recently to Vo Ebor and
besought me that I should seek thee out. Straightaway I went to horse,
and, thinking that thou wert still in Tol Honeth, I posted southward
that I might bring thee news that thy gentle brethren felt might be of
interest unto thee.”
“Oh? What news is this?”
“I confess that I have no understanding of the true import of their
message, but I am instructed to advise thee that a certain kinswoman of
thine is with child, and that thy daughter, whom I have not yet had the
pleasure of meeting–though I yearn for the day when I shall be
privileged to greet her and respectfully bend my knee unto her–” “All
right, Mandorallen, I get the message.”
“This news, I presume, is of some significance?”
“Moderately so, Sir Knight.”
“Might I know its import?”
“No, you might not. You don’t need to know what it means. Turn around
and go back to Vo Ebor. You have performed your duty, Sir Knight, and
I thank you. Now go home.”
I’ll take this opportunity to apologize for my abruptness to the Knight
Protector. All I really wanted him to do was to get out of sight so
that I could go into paroxysms of exultation. Ildera was pregnant! The
Godslayer dozed beneath her heart!
I broke off my fruitless search for Chamdar at that point, since it was
fairly obvious that I wasn’t going to find him. I went on up to
Asturia to have a look at Leildorin, and I came away with the knowledge
that he was indeed the Wildantor we had been waiting for. Everything
was coming together the way it was supposed to, so I crossed Ulgoland
to the Vale.
When I got home, the twins advised me that Ildera would be delivered
about midwinter.
“Polgara’s going to move the family not long after the child’s
birth,”
Beltira told me.
“That’s probably not a bad idea,” I said.
“We’ve all been in and out of Annath quite frequently for about fifteen
years now, and Chamdar’s on the loose out there somewhere. It’ll be
safer if Pol moves on. Is Alara improving at all?”
Belkira shook his head sadly.
“She still refuses to accept the fact that her husband’s dead.
Polgara’s tried everything she can think of to bring her out of it, but
nothing’s worked yet.”
“A change of scene might bring her around,” I suggested.
“It’s hard to say.” He didn’t sound very hopeful about it.
The twins and I talked about it at some length, and we agreed that I
probably should go to Sendaria and let myself be seen in places other
than Annath. The Grolim prophecies, and probably the Ashabine Oracles,
as well, were certainly keeping Ctuchik advised, so I was sure that he
knew of the Godslayer’s imminent birth and the fact that he’d be born
in Sendaria. It was time for me to start pulling Chamdar out of
position, so I put on my storyteller’s costume and went to Sendaria.
I stopped by the city of Sendar to look in on the new king, Fulrach,
and his giddy wife, Layla. Don’t misunderstand me here. I love
Layla.
She’s probably got the biggest heart in the world, but she was awfully
silly as a girl–and almost perpetually pregnant. I sometimes wonder
how Fulrach found time to run his kingdom.
Then I went out into the countryside. I tramped the back roads and
country lanes of central Sendaria all during the autumn and early
winter of that year, and I’m positive that Chamdar’s Grolims were
watching my every move. I didn’t go out of my way to make it difficult
for them.
It was almost Erastide by now, and my sense of anticipation was growing
stronger. Erastide is a major holiday in Sendaria, since it fits so
neatly into the traditional ecumenicism of the Sendars. The date of
the holiday–midwinter–is really quite arbitrary. The creation of the
world didn’t happen on a single day, but I guess the clergy just picked
a day at random for the yearly celebration. As the holiday approached,
I moved from Darine to Erat to Winold with a growing conviction that
Erastide this year was going to be something rather special. It was
the kind of thing Garion’s friend would do.
I was completely out of touch, of course. We’d had evidence in the
past that the Grolims have ways of listening when we communicate with
each other in our rather peculiar way, and the upcoming EVENT was so
important that we didn’t want to give Chamdar anything to work with
inadvertently. In retrospect, I can say that our extreme cautiousness
was probably a mistake.
Polgara and I have gone over what happened in Annath that winter again
and again and again, and we can now see exactly where we both made our
mistakes. The death of Darral should have alerted us, for one thing.
As Geran had suspected, that rock slide that had killed his father had
not been a simple accident. In some way that we’ve never been able to
determine, Chamdar had located my daughter and the family she’d
protected for over thirteen centuries, and Darral’s death–murder, I
can call it–was just the first step in his elaborate plan.
Alara’s insanity was the second step, I’m afraid, and Pol and I both
missed it.
My daughter tells me that Alara’s condition had worsened that fall and
that she’d taken to wandering off into the surrounding mountains in
search of her husband. I’m sure that Chamdar had a hand in that, too;
the Grolims are expert at tampering with the minds of others, after
all.
At any rate, it was on the day before Erastide when Ildera went into
false labor, and Polgara had gone from Darral’s house to the far end of
the village to examine her, and Alara–at Chamdar’s instigation, I’m
sure –had seized the opportunity to go off into the nearby mountains
in search of her husband. Pol returned to Darral’s house and found
that Alara was gone. It’d happened several times before, and Pol,
quite naturally, went out to look for her.
And that’s how Chamdar got Pol out of the way. She’s blamed herself
about that for years, but it wasn’t her fault.
I’m convinced now that Ildera’s false labor was also Chamdar’s doing.
You almost have to admire how carefully he orchestrated the events
during those dreadful two days. Once Pol had left the village,