scattered to the winds, leaving Algar standing forlornly on the bank of
the Aldur River.
Riva and I went west until we reached the mountains, and then we swung
off slightly northwesterly to avoid the northern reaches of Ulgoland.
I’d gotten all the entertainment I wanted out of our skirmishes with
the Angaraks. I didn’t feel much like playing with Algroths or
Eldrakyn.
We came down out of the mountains and crossed the fertile plains of
modern-day Sendaria until we reached the shore of the Great Western
Sea. We stopped there to wait for the warriors Cherek had promised to
send–and their women, of course. I was establishing new countries,
and I needed breeding stock.
Yes, I know that’s a blunt way to put it, and it’ll probably offend
Polgara, but that’s just too bad. If she doesn’t have that to be
offended about, she’ll probably just find something else.
Got you that time, didn’t I, Pol?
While Riva and I were waiting for his people to arrive from Val Alorn,
I amused myself by cheating. There was a sizable forest near the
beach, and I utilized my talents to fell trees and saw them into
boards. Riva had seen me do all sorts of things with the Will and the
Word, but for some reason, the sight of a log spewing out unprovoked
sawdust seemed to unnerve him. He finally refused entirely to watch,
but sat instead staring out at the sea and muttering the word
“unnatural”–usually loud enough for me to hear. I tried to explain to
him that we were going to need boats to get to the Isle of the Winds,
and that boats implied lumber, but he refused to listen to me. It
wasn’t until I had stacks of lumber spread out for a quarter of a mile
along the beach that he finally came up with what came fairly close to
a reasonable objection.
“If you make boats out of those green boards, they’ll sink. They’ll
have to cure for at least a year.”
“Oh, not that long,” I disagreed. Then, just to show him who was in
charge, I looked at a nearby stack, concentrated, and said,
“Hot.”
The stack started to smoke immediately. Riva had irritated me, and I
had gone a bit too far. I reduced the heat, and the smoke was replaced
by steam as the green boards began to sweat out their moisture.
“They’re warping,” he pointed out triumphantly.
“Of course they are,” I replied calmly.
“I want them to warp.”
“Warped lumber’s no good.”
“It depends on what you want to build with it,” I disagreed.
“We want ships, and ships have curved sides. Something with flat sides
is called a barge, and it doesn’t sail very well.”
“You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you, Belgarath? Even for
your mistakes.”
“Why are you being so cross with me, Riva?”
“Because you’ve torn my life apart. You’ve separated me from my
family, and you’re taking me to the most wretched place on earth to
spend the rest of my life. Stay away from me, Belgarath. I don’t like
you very much right now.” And he stalked off up the beach.
I started after him.
“Leave him alone, Belgarath.” It was my friend again.
“If I’m going to have his cooperation, I’m going to have to make peace
with him.”
“He’s a little upset right now. He’ll settle down. Don’t weaken your
position by going to him. Make him come to you.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“He has to. You’re the only one who can tell him what to do, and he
knows it. He’s got an enormous sense of responsibility. That’s why I
chose him. Dras is bigger, and Algar’s smarter, but Riva sticks to
something once he starts it. Go back to baking boards. It’ll keep
your mind off your troubles.”
Somehow he always knew what the most insulting thing he could say would
be. Baking boards! I still get hot around the ears when I remember
that particular expression.
Two days later, Riva came to me apologetically.
“I’m sorry, Belgarath,” he said contritely.
“What for? You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. I have torn your
life apart, I have separated you from your family, and I am going to
take you to the Isle of the Winds to spend the rest of your life. The
only thing you left out was the fact that none of it’s been my idea.
You’re the Keeper of the Orb now, and somebody has to tell you what to
do. I’m your teacher. Neither one of us asked for the jobs, but we
got them anyway.
We might as well make the best of it. Now come over here, and I’ll
show you the plans I’ve drawn up for your boats.”
“Ships,” he corrected absently.
“Any way you want it, Orb-keeper.”
The Alorns began drifting in the next afternoon. Alorns don’t march.
They don’t even stay together when they’re traveling, and their
direction is pretty indeterminate, since small groups of them
periodically break off to go exploring.
Riva put them to work building ships immediately, and that lonely beach
turned into an impromptu shipyard. There were a number of arguments
about my design for those ships, and some of the objections raised by
various Alorns were even valid. Most of them were silly, however.
Alorns love to argue, probably because arguments in their culture are
usually preludes to fights.
I drifted up and down the beach, cheating wherever it was necessary,
and we finished about ten of those ships in just under six weeks. Then
Riva left his cousin Anrak in charge and we took an advance party out
into the Sea of the Winds toward the Isle.
If you’ve never seen the Isle of the Winds, you might think that the
descriptions of it you’ve heard are exaggerations. Believe me, they
aren’t.
In the first place, the island has only one beach, a narrow strip of
gravel about a mile long at the head of a deeply indented bay on the
east side.
The rest of the shoreline is comprised of cliffs. There are woods
inland, dark evergreen forests such as you’ll find in any northern
region, and some fairly extensive meadows in the mountain valleys to
the north. It probably wouldn’t be so bad, except that the wind blows
all the time, and it can–and frequently does–rain for six straight
months without let up.
Then, when it gets tired of raining, it snows.
We rowed around the Isle twice, but we didn’t find any other beaches,
so we rowed up that bay I mentioned and came ashore on the island’s
only beach.
“Where am I supposed to build this fort?” Riva asked me when the two
of us finally got our feet on solid ground again.
“That’s up to you,” I replied.
“What’s the most logical place to build it?”
“Right here, I suppose, since this is the only place where anybody can
come ashore. If I’ve got my fort here, I’ll be able to see them
coming, at least.”
“Sound thinking.” I looked at him rather closely. That boyish quality
was starting to fade. The responsibility he’d so lightly accepted back
in Cthol Mishrak was starting to sit heavily on him.
He looked at the steep valley running down out of the mountains to the
head of the bay.
“The fort’s going to have to be a little bigger than I’d thought,” he
mused.
“I’ll need to block that whole valley with it. I guess I’ll have to
build a city here.”
“You might as well. There won’t be much to do on this island except
make babies, so your population’s going to expand. You’ll need lots of
houses.”
He suddenly blushed.
“You do know what’s involved in that, don’t you? Making babies, I
mean?”
“Of course I do.”
“I just wanted to be sure that you weren’t going to be out turning over
cabbage leaves or trying to chase down storks looking for them.”
“Don’t be insulting.” He looked up the valley again.
“There are enough trees to build a city, I guess.”
“No,” I told him flatly.
“Don’t build a wooden city. The Tolnedrans tried that at Tol Honeth,
and they no sooner got it finished than it burned to the ground. Use
rock.”
“That’ll take a long time, Belgarath,” he objected.
“Have you got anything better to do? Set up a temporary camp here on
the beach and put signal fires on those headlands at the mouth of the
bay to guide the rest of your people here. Then you and I are going to
spend some time designing a city. I don’t want this place just growing
here like a weed. Its purpose is to protect the Orb, and I want to be
certain that there aren’t any holes in the defenses.”
Over the next several weeks the rest of Riva’s ships rowed in, six or
eight at a time, and by then Iron-grip and I had completed the layout