David and Leigh Eddings – Belgarath the Sorcerer

“Thanks all the same, Haknar, but I think I’d better be moving on.

Vo Astur depresses me. You can’t get an Asturian to talk about

anything but politics.”

“Politics?” Haknar laughed.

“The only thing I’ve ever heard an Asturian talk about is who he’s

going to go to war with next week.”

“That’s what passes for politics here in Asturia,” I told him, rising

to my feet.

“Give my best to Cherek the next time you see him. Tell him that I’m

still keeping an eye on things.”

“I’m sure that’ll make him sleep better at night. Are you coming to

Val Alorn for the wedding?”

“What wedding?”

“Cherek’s. His wife died while he was off in Mallorea. Since you

stole all his sons, he’s going to need a new heir. His bride-to-be is

a real beauty –about fifteen or so. She’s pretty, but she’s not

really very bright. If you say “good morning” to her, it takes her ten

minutes to think up an answer.”

I felt a sudden wrench. I wasn’t the only one who’d lost a wife.

“Give him my apologies,” I told Haknar shortly.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to make it. I’d better be going now.

Thanks for the information.”

“Glad to be of help, Belgarath.” Then he turned and bellowed,

“Innkeeper!

More ale!”

I went back out into the street and walked slowly back toward the

temple of Chaldan, being careful not to think about Cherek’s

bereavement.

I had my own, and that filled my mind. I didn’t really want to dwell

on it, since there was nobody around to chain me to a bed.

I’d received a few tentative invitations to visit the duke in his

palace, but I’d put them off with assorted vague excuses. I hadn’t

visited the Duke of Vo Wacune, and I definitely didn’t want to show any

favoritism.

Given my probably undeserved celebrity, I decided not to have anything

to do with any of those three contending dukes. I had no desire to get

involved in the Arendish civil wars–not even by implication.

That might have been a mistake. I probably could have saved Arendia

several eons of suffering if I’d just called those three imbeciles

together and rammed a peace treaty down their throats. Considering the

nature of Arends, however, they’d more than likely have violated the

treaty before the ink was dry.

Anyway, I’d found out what I needed to know in Vo Astur, and the

invitations from the Ducal Palace were becoming more and more

insistent, so I thanked the priests for their hospitality and left town

before daybreak the following morning. I’ve been leaving town before

daybreak for longer than I care to think about.

I was almost certain that the Duke of Vo Astur would take my departure

as a personal affront, so when I was a mile or so south of town, I went

back into the woods a ways and took the form of the wolf.

Yes, it was painful. I wasn’t even certain that I could bring myself

to do it, but it was time to find out. I’d been doing a number of

things lately that pushed at the edges of my pain. I was not going to

live out my life as an emotional cripple. Poledra wouldn’t have wanted

that, and if I went mad, so what? One more mad wolf in the Arendish

forest wouldn’t have made that much difference.

My assessment of the duke of Vo Astur turned out to be quite accurate.

I was ghosting southward along the edge of the woods about an hour

later when a group of armed horsemen came pounding along that twisting

road. The Asturian duke really wanted me to pay him a visit. I

drifted back in under the trees, dropped to my haunches, and watched

the duke’s men ride by. Arends were a much shorter people in those

days than they are now, so they didn’t look too ridiculous on those

stunted horses.

I traveled down through the forest and ultimately reached the plains of

Mimbre. Unlike the Wacites and the Asturians, the Mimbrates had

cleared away the woods of their domain almost completely. Mimbrate

horses were larger than those of their northern cousins, and the nobles

of that southern duchy already had begun to develop the armor that

characterizes them today. A mounted knight needs open ground to work

on, so the trees had to go. The open farmland that resulted was rather

peripheral to Mimbrate thinking.

When we think of the Arendish civil wars, we normally think of the

three contending duchies, but that wasn’t the full extent of it. Lesser

nobles also had their little entertainments, and there was hardly a

district in all of Mimbre that didn’t have its own ongoing feuds. I’d

resumed my own form, although I’ll admit that I gave some serious

consideration to living out the rest of my life as a wolf, and I was

going south toward Vo Mimbre when I came across one of those feuds in

full flower.

Unfortunately, the dimwitted Arends absolutely loved the idea of siege

engines. Arends have a formal turn of mind, and the prospect of a

decades-long standoff appeals to them enormously. The besiegers could

set up camp around the walls of a fortress and mindlessly throw

boulders at the walls for years, while the besieged could spend those

same years happily piling rocks against the inside of those walls.

Stalemates get boring after a while, though, and every so often,

somebody felt the need to commit a few atrocities to offend his

opponent.

In this particular case, the besieging baron decided to round up all

the local serfs and behead them in plain view of the defender’s

castle.

That’s when I took a hand in the game. As it happened, I was standing

on a hilltop, and I posed dramatically there with my staff

outstretched.

“Stop!” I roared, enhancing my voice to such an extent that they

probably heard me in Nyissa. The baron and his knights wheeled to

gawk; the knight who was preparing to chop off a serfs head paused

momentarily, and then he raised his sword again.

He dropped it the next instant, however. It’s a little hard to hold

onto a sword when the hilt turns white-hot in your hands. He danced

around, howling and blowing on his burned fingers.

I descended the hill and confronted the murderous Mimbrate baron.

“You will not perpetrate this outrage!” I told him.

“What I do is none of thy concern, old man,” he replied, but he didn’t

really sound very sure of himself.

“I’m making it my concern! If you even attempt to harm these people,

I’ll tear out your heart!”

“Kill this old fool,” the baron told one of his knights.

The knight dutifully reached for his sword, but I gathered my Will,

leveled my staff, and said,

“Swine.”

The knight immediately turned into a pig.

“Sorcery!” the baron gasped.

“Precisely. Now pack up your people and go home–and turn those serfs

loose.”

“My cause is just,” he asserted.

“Your methods aren’t. Now get out of my sight, or you’ll grow a snout

and a curly tail right where you stand.”

“The practice of sorcery is forbidden in the realm of the Duke of Vo

Mimbre,” he told me–as if that made any difference.

“Oh, really? How are you going to stop me?” I pointed my staff at a

nearby tree stump and exploded it into splinters.

“You’re pressing your luck, my Lord Baron. That could just as easily

have been you. I told you to get out of my sight. Now do it before I

lose my temper.”

“Thou wilt regret this, Sorcerer.”

“Not as much as you will if you don’t start moving right now.” I

gestured at the knight I’d just converted into ambulatory bacon, and he

returned to his own form. His eyes were bulging with horror. He took

one look at me and fled screaming.

The stubborn baron started to say something, but he evidently changed

his mind. He ordered his men to mount up and then sullenly led them

off toward the south.

“You can go back to your homes,” I told the serfs. Then I went back up

to my hilltop to watch and to make sure that the baron didn’t try to

circle back on me.

I suppose I could have done it differently. There hadn’t really been

any need for that direct confrontation. I could have driven the baron

and his knights off without ever revealing myself, but I’d lost my

temper. I get into trouble that way fairly often.

Anyway, two days later I began to see lurid descriptions of a “foul

sorcerer” nailed to almost every tree I passed. The descriptions of me

were fairly accurate, but the reward offered for my capture was

insultingly small.

I decided at that point to go directly on to Tolnedra. I was certain

that I could deal with any repercussions resulting from my display of