“We can do this all week, if you want,” he growled. Then he kicked me
again.
My principles had been eroded by the years of what he chose to call
dissipation and debauchery, but not so much that I was going to elevate
our discussion from a physical one to something more serious, and he
knew that. As long as he stuck to kicks and punches, I couldn’t
respond with anything except kicks and punches. I finally got to my
feet, and we pounded on each other for a while. Peculiarly, it made me
feel better, and I rather think Beldin knew that it would.
Finally we both collapsed on the floor, half exhausted.
With a great effort, he rolled his gnarled and twisted body over and
hit me.
“You’ve betrayed our Master!” he bellowed at me, then hit me again.
“You’ve betrayed Poledra!” He blackened one of my eyes.
“You’ve betrayed your daughters!” In a remarkable display of agility
for a man lying on the floor, he kicked me in the chest.
“You’ve betrayed the memories of Belsambar and Belmakor! You’re no
better than Zedar!” He drew back that massive fist again.
“Hold it,” I told him, weakly raising one hand.
“Have you had enough?”
“Obviously.”
“Are you coming back to the Vale with me?”
“All right–if it’s that important to you.”
He sat up.
“Somehow I knew you’d see it my way. Have you got anything to drink
around here?”
“Probably. I couldn’t vouch for it, though. I haven’t had a drink
since I left Camaar.”
“You’ve probably worked up quite a thirst, then.”
“I don’t think I should, Beldin.”
“Don’t worry, you’re not like other drunks. You were drinking in
Camaar for a specific reason. That part of it’s past now. Just don’t
let it get ahead of you again.”
The Marag lady whose kitchen we’d just wrecked brought us each a
tankard of ale. It tasted awful to me, but Beldin seemed to like it.
He liked it enough to have three more, at any rate. I didn’t even
finish the first one. I didn’t want to go down that road again. Just
in passing, I’d like to let you know that over the centuries I’ve spent
far more time holding tankards than I have drinking from them. People
can believe what they want to, but I’ve slept in enough gutters for one
lifetime, thanks all the same.
The next morning we apologized to my hostess for all the damage we’d
done, and left for the Vale. The weather was fine, so we decided to
walk rather than assume other forms. There was no particular urgency
about getting home.
“What’s been going on?” I asked Beldin when we were about a mile out
of Mar Amon.
“The Angaraks have been coming across the land-bridge,” he replied.
“Yes, so I understand. Salmissra told me about those scouting
parties.”
“It’s gone a little further than that. As closely as I’ve been able to
tell, the entire population of Cthol Mishrak has been coming across.
The soldiers came over to this side first, and they moved down the
coast.
They’ve been building a fortress at the mouth of one of those rivers
that runs down to the Sea of the East. They call their fort Rak Goska,
and they refer to themselves as Murgos. They’re still Angaraks, but
they seem to feel a need to distinguish themselves from the people who
stayed in Mallorea.”
“Not exactly. Have you ever gotten around to learning Old Angarak?”
“I don’t waste my time on dead languages, Belgarath.”
“It’s not entirely dead. The people at Cthol Mishrak spoke a corrupted
version of it. Anyway, the word
“Murgo” meant nobleman or warrior in Old Angarak. Evidently these
Murgos are the people who were the aristocrats in Cthol Mishrak.”
“What does
“Thull” mean?”
“Serf–or maybe peasant. The distinction’s a little vague in Angarak
society. You should know that, Beldin. You’ve spent more time in
Mallorea than I have.”
“I wasn’t there to socialize. The second wave of Angaraks settled to
the north of the Murgos. They call themselves Thulls, and they’re
supplying the Murgos with food. The third wave’s moving into what used
to be eastern Aloria–that big forest up there. They’ve been calling
themselves Nadraks.”
“Townsmen,” I translated for him.
“The merchant class. Are the Alorns doing anything about this?”
“Not really. You spread them a little thin. Bull-neck talks about
expeditions in the East, but he doesn’t have the manpower. Algar
probably couldn’t do very much about it, because the Eastern Escarpment
blocks his access to that part of the continent.”
“We’d better see if we can make contact with the Master when we get
back to the Vale. This migration’s got a very specific reason behind
it. As long as the Angaraks stayed in Mallorea, they weren’t any
problem.
They’re establishing a presence on this side of the Sea of the East so
that they can bring in the Grolims. We might want to chase those
Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls back to where they came from.”
“Another war?”
“If we have to. I don’t think we want Grolims on this continent if we
can prevent it.”
“Astonishing,” he said.
“What is?”
“Your mind still works. I thought that maybe you’d broken it during
the course of the last dozen years.”
“I came close. Another few years in Camaar probably would have turned
the trick. I was drinking everything in sight.”
“So I heard. What finally persuaded you to dry out?”
“The Master paid me a call. I sobered up in a hurry after that and
left Camaar. I went down through Arendia and Tolnedra–you know about
all that if you’ve been trailing me. Did the Dryads cause you any
problems when you went through their woods?”
“I didn’t see a one of them.”
“Maybe it’s the wrong time of year. They definitely interrupted my
trip.”
“Oh?”
“It was during their breeding season.”
“That must have been exciting.”
“Not really. Did you talk with Salmissra at all when you went through
Sthiss Tor?”
“Briefly. There was a lot of turmoil in Sthiss Tor when I passed
through there. Somebody’d just butchered all the high-level palace
eunuchs.”
I laughed delightedly.
“Good girl!”
“What are you talking about, Belgarath?”
“This particular Salmissra’s actually got a mind. She made the mistake
of letting the palace eunuchs find out about it, though. They were
planning to assassinate her, and I suggested a way for her to remove
that particular danger. Did she get them all?”
“From what I heard, she did.”
“That’s probably why it too her so long. She’s a very thorough young
lady. Now, what’s Torak doing at Ashaba? Salmissra told me that he’d
gone there.”
“From what I hear, he’s having religious experiences. He’s been caught
up in a kind of ecstasy for the past ten years or so. He’s babbling
all sorts of obscure pronouncements. Urvon’s got a team of Grolims at
Ashaba taking down every word. They’re calling those ravings “the
Ashabine Oracles.” In fact, there’s been an outbreak of lunacy
lately.
Bull-neck’s got a crazy man chained to a post a few miles to the west
of Boktor, with scribes copying down the poor fellow’s every word.”
“Good. I told him to do that. Just before the Master left, he told me
that we were going to be getting our instructions from prophecy now
instead of receiving them directly. This is the Age of Prophecy.”
“You sound like a Dal when you talk about ages that way.”
“Evidently the Dals know something we don’t. I think we’ll need a copy
of that transcription Dras is having set down, and we’d better pass the
word to the other kingdoms to start paying attention to crazy
people.”
I paused.
“How are the girls?” I asked, trying to make it sound casual.
“Older. You’ve been gone for quite a while.”
“They must be about ten years old by now.”
“Thirteen, actually. Their birthday was just this past winter.”
“It’ll be good to see them again.”
“Don’t get your heart set on a warm reunion, Belgarath. Beldaran might
be happy to see you, but you’re not one of Pol’s favorite people.”
That turned out to be a gross understatement.
Beldin and I traveled out of Maragor and crossed the Tolnedran
Mountains to the Vale. We didn’t particularly hurry. My grotesque
little brother’s observations about Polgara had made me slightly
apprehensive about meeting her–fully justified, as it turned out.
I had missed the serenity of the Vale during those vagabond years, and
a profound sense of peace came over me as we came down out of the
mountains and looked once more upon our home. The painful memories
were still there, of course, but the passage of time had muted and
softened them, although every so often I’d see something that twisted
inside me like a knife.
My daughters had moved in with the twins during Beldin’s absence.
The promise Beldaran had exhibited when she was a baby had been more