oysters. A created oyster tastes almost the same as a real one, so she
pretended not to notice my subterfuge.
Then, when she was about five months along, we got into the business of
cradles. I was a little hurt by the fact that she asked the twins to
make them instead of having me do it. I protested, but she bluntly
told me, “You’re not good with tools.” She put her hand on my favorite
chair and shook it. I’ll concede that it wobbled a bit, but it hadn’t
collapsed under me in the thousand or so years I’d been sitting in it.
That’s sturdy enough, isn’t it?
The twins went all out in building those cradles. When you get right
down to it, a cradle’s just a small bed with rockers on it. The ones
the twins built, however, had elaborately curled rockers and
intricately carved headboards.
“Why two?” I asked my wife after Beltira and Belkira had proudly
delivered their handiwork to our tower.
“It doesn’t hurt to be prepared for any eventuality,” she replied.
“It’s not uncommon for several young to be born at the same time.” She
laid one hand on her distended belly.
“Soon I’ll be able to count the heartbeats.
Then I’ll know if two cradles will be enough.”
I considered the implications of that and chose not to pursue the
matter any further. There were some things I’d decided that I wouldn’t
even think about, much less bring out into the open.
Poledra’s pregnancy may not have been remarkable to her, but it
certainly was to me. I was so swollen up with pride that I was
probably unbearable to be around. My Master accepted my boasting with
fondly amused tolerance, and the twins were quite nearly as ecstatic as
I was.
Shepherds get all moony at lambing time, so I suppose their reaction
was only natural. Beldin, however, soon reached the point where he
couldn’t stand to be around me, and he went off to Tolnedra to keep
watch over the second Honethite Dynasty. The Tolnedrans were
establishing trade relations with the Arends and the Nyissans, and the
Honeths have always been acquisitive. We definitely didn’t want them
to start getting ideas about annexation. One war between the Gods had
been quite enough, thank you.
Winter came early that year, and it seemed much more severe than usual.
Trees were exploding in the cold in the Far North, and the snow was
piling up to incredible depths. Then on a bitterly cold day when the
sky was spitting pellets of snow as hard as pebbles, four Alorns
bundled to the ears in fur came down into the Vale. I was able to
recognize them from a considerable distance because of their size.
“Well met. Ancient Belgarath,” Cherek Bear-shoulders greeted me when I
went out to meet him and his sons. I wish people wouldn’t call me
that.
“You’re a long way from home, Cherek,” I noted.
“Is there some sort of problem?”
“Just the opposite, Revered One,” Dras Bull-neck rumbled at me.
Dras was even bigger than his father, and his voice came up out of his
boots.
“My brothers have found a way to reach Mallorea.”
I looked quickly at Iron-grip and Fleet-foot. Riva was nearly as tall
as Dras, but leaner. He had a fierce black beard and piercing blue
eyes.
Algar, the silent brother, was clean-shaven, and he had the rangy limbs
of a coursing hound.
“We were hunting,” Riva explained.
“There are white bears in the Far North, and Mother’s birthday is in
the spring. Algar and I wanted to give her a white fur cape as a
present. She’d like that, wouldn’t she?” There was a strange, boyish
innocence about Riva. It’s not that he was stupid or anything. It was
just that he was eager to please and always enthusiastic. Sometimes he
almost seemed to bubble.
Algar, of course, didn’t say anything. He almost never did. He was
the most close-mouthed man I’ve ever known.
“I’ve heard about those white bears,” I said.
“Isn’t hunting them just a little dangerous?”
Riva shrugged.
“There were two of us,” he said–as if that would make a difference to
a fourteen-foot bear weighing almost a ton.
“Anyway, the ice is very thick in the northern reaches of the Sea of
the East this year. We’d wounded a bear, and he was trying to get away
from us.
We were chasing him, and that’s when we found the bridge.”
“What bridge?”
“The one that crosses over to Mallorea.” He said it in the most
offhand way imaginable, as if the discovery of something that Alorns
had been trying to find for two thousand years wasn’t really all that
important.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to give me a few details about this
bridge?” I suggested.
“I was just getting to that. There’s a point that juts out to the east
up in Morindland, and another that juts toward the west out of the
lands of the Karands over in Mallorea. There’s a string of rocky
little islets that connects the two. The bear had gotten away from us
somehow. It was sort of foggy that day, and it’s very hard to see a
white bear in the fog. Algar and I were curious, so we crossed the
ice, following that string of islands.
About mid-afternoon a breeze came up and blew off the fog. We looked
up, and there was Mallorea. We decided not to go exploring, though.
There’s no point in letting Torak know that we’ve discovered the
bridge, is there? We turned around and came back. We ran across a
tribe of Morindim and they told us that they’ve been using that bridge
for centuries to visit the Karands. A Morind will give you anything he
owns for a string of glass beads, and Karandese traders seem to know
that. The Morinds will trade ivory walrus tusks and priceless
sea-otter skins and the hides of those dangerous white bears for a
string of beads you can buy in any country fair for a penny.” His eyes
narrowed.
“I hate it when people cheat other people, don’t you?” Riva definitely
had opinions.
Bear-shoulders gave me a rueful smile.
“We could have found out about this years ago if we’d taken the trouble
to spend some time with the Morindim. We’ve been tearing the north
apart for two thousand years trying to find some way to cross over to
Mallorea and pick up the war with the Angaraks where we left off, and
the Morindim knew the way all along. We’ve got to learn to pay more
attention to our neighbors.”
As nearly as I can recall, that’s fairly close to the way the
conversation went. Those of you who’ve read the Book of Alorn will
realize that the priest of Belar who wrote those early passages took a
great deal of liberty with his material. It just goes to show you that
you should never trust a priest to be entirely factual.
I gave Cherek Bear-shoulders a rather hard look. I could see where
this was going.
“This is all very interesting, Cherek, but why are you bringing it to
me?”
“We thought you’d like to know, Belgarath,” he said with an ingenuously
feigned look of innocence. Cherek was a very shrewd man, but he could
be terribly transparent sometimes.
“Don’t try to be coy with me, Cherek,” I told him.
“Exactly what have you got on your mind?”
“It’s not really all that complicated, Belgarath. The boys and I
thought we might drift over to Mallorea and steal your Master’s Orb
back from Torak One-eye.” He said it as if he were proposing a stroll
in the park.
“Then we got to thinking that you might want to come along, so we
decided to come down here and invite you.”
“Absolutely out of the question,” I snapped.
“My wife’s going to have a baby, and I’m not going to leave her here
alone.”
“Congratulations,” Algar murmured. It was the only word he spoke that
whole afternoon.
“Thank you,” I replied. Then I turned back to his father.
“All right, Cherek. We know that this bridge of yours is there. It’ll
still be there next year. I might be willing to discuss this
expedition of yours then–but not now.”
“There might be a problem with that, Belgarath,” he said seriously.
“When my sons told me about what they’d found, I went to the priests of
Belar and had them examine the auguries. This is the year to go. The
ice up there won’t be as thick again for years and years. Then they
cast my own auguries, and from what they say, this could be the most
fortunate year in my whole life.”
“Do you actually believe that superstitious nonsense?” I demanded.
“Are you so gullible that you think that somebody can foretell the
future by fondling a pile of sheep guts?”
He looked a little injured.
“This was important, Belgarath. I certainly wouldn’t trust sheep’s