father, Dras and Algar could make all the proposals to him they wanted
to. He wouldn’t act as their go-between.
Bear-shoulders had aged since we’d gone to Mallorea. His hair and
beard were shot with grey now, and a lot of the fun seemed to have gone
out of his eyes. He told me that the Nadraks had been scouting along
Bull-neck’s eastern border and that the Murgos had been coming down the
Eastern Escarpment and probing into Algaria.
“We probably ought to discourage that,” I told him.
“Dras and Algar are taking care of it,” he replied.
“Technically speaking, there’s still a state of war between us and the
Angaraks, so we could probably justify a certain amount of firmness if
the issue ever came up in court.”
“Cherek, we’re talking about international politics here. There aren’t
any laws, and there aren’t any courts.”
He sighed.
“The world’s getting more civilized all the time, Belgarath,” he said
mournfully.
“The Tolnedrans are always trying to come up with picky little
restrictions.”
“Oh?”
“They’ve been trying to get me to agree to outlaw what they call
“piracy.” Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you ever heard of?
There aren’t any laws on the high seas. What happens out there isn’t
anybody’s business. Why drag judges and lawyers into it?”
“Tolnedrans are like that sometimes. Tell Dras and Algar to find wives
someplace else, would you please? Polgara’s not available at the
moment.”
“I’ll mention it to them.”
The Alorn calendar was a little imprecise in those days. The Alorns
kept a count of years, but they didn’t bother attaching names to the
months the way the Tolnedrans did. Alorns just kept track of the
seasons and let it go at that, so I can’t really give you the precise
date of the wedding of Beldaran and Riva. It was three weeks or so
after the arrival of Riva’s father and brothers, though. About ten
days before the wedding, Polgara set aside her campaign to break every
heart on the Isle of the Winds, and she and Beldaran went into an
absolute frenzy of dressmaking.
With the help of several good-natured Alorn girls, they rebuilt
Beldaran’s wedding dress from the ground up, and then they turned their
attention to a suitable gown for the bride’s sister. Beldaran had
always enjoyed sewing, but Pol’s fondness for that activity dates from
that period in her life. Sewing keeps a lady’s fingers busy, but it
gives her plenty of time to talk. I’m not really sure what those
ladies talked about during those ten days, because they always stopped
whenever I entered the room. Evidently it was the sort of thing ladies
prefer not to share with men. Polgara apparently gave her sister all
sorts of advice about married life–although how she found out about
such things is beyond me. How much information could she have picked
up sitting in a tree surrounded by birds?
Anyway, the happy day finally arrived. Riva was very nervous, but
Beldaran seemed serene. The ceremony took place in the Hall of the
Rivan King–Riva’s throne room. A throne room probably isn’t the best
place to hold a wedding, but Riva insisted, explaining that he wanted
to be married in the presence of the Orb and that it might have been a
little inappropriate for him to wear his sword into the Temple of
Belar. That was Riva for you.
There are all sorts of obscure little ceremonies involved in weddings,
the meanings of which have long since been lost. The bridegroom is
supposed to get there first, for example, and he’s supposed to be
surrounded by burly people who are there to deal firmly with anyone who
objects. Riva had plenty of those, of course. His father, his
brothers, and his cousin, all in bright-burnished mail shirts, bulked
large around him as he stood at the front of the hall. I’d firmly
taken Bull-neck’s axe away from him and made him wear a sheathed sword
instead. Dras was an enthusiast, and I didn’t want him to start
chopping up wedding guests just to demonstrate how much he loved his
younger brother.
Once they’d settled down and the clinking of their mail had subsided,
Beldin provided a fanfare to announce the bride’s arrival. Beldin
absolutely adored Beldaran, and he got a bit carried away. I’m almost
positive that the citizens of Tol Honeth, hundreds of leagues to the
south, paused in the business of swindling each other to remark
“What was that?” when the sound of a thousand silver trumpets
shattered the air of the Rivan throne room. That fanfare was followed
by an inhumanly suppressed choir of female voices–a few hundred or so,
I’d imagine–whispering a hymn to the bride. Beldin had studied music
for a couple of quiet centuries once, and that hymn was very
impressive, but eighty-four-part harmony is just a little complicated
for my taste.
Armored Alorns swung the great doors of the Hall of the Rivan King
open, and Beldaran, all in white, stepped into the precise center of
that doorway. I knew it was the precise center because I’d measured it
eight times and cut a mark into the stones of the floor that’s probably
still there. Beldaran, pale as the moon, stood in that framing archway
while all those Alorns turned in their seats to crane their necks and
look at her.
Somewhere, a great bell began to peal. After the wedding, I went
looking for that bell, but I never found it.
Then my youngest daughter was touched with a soft white light that grew
more and more intense.
Polgara, wrapped in a blue velvet cloak, stepped forward to take my
arm.
“Are you doing that?” she asked me, inclining her head toward the
shaft of light illuminating her sister.
“Not me, Pol,” I replied.
“I was just going to ask if you were doing it.”
“Maybe it’s Uncle Beldin.” She slightly shrugged her shoulders, and
her cloak softly fell away to reveal her gown. I almost choked when I
saw it.
Beldaran was all in white, and she glowed like pale flame in that shaft
of light that I’m almost certain was a wedding gift from the funny old
fellow in the rickety cart. Polgara was all in blue, and her gown
broke away from her shoulders in complex folds and ruffles trimmed with
snowy lace. It was cut somewhat daringly for the day, leaving no
question that she was a girl. That deep-blue gown was almost like a
breaking wave, and Polgara rose out of it like a Goddess rising from
the sea.
I controlled myself as best I could.
“Nice dress,” I said from between clenched teeth.
“Oh, this old thing?” she said deprecatingly, touching one of the
ruffles in an offhand way. Then she laughed a warm, throaty laugh that
was far older than her years, and she actually kissed me. She’d never
willingly done that before, and it startled me so much that I barely
heard the alarm bells ringing in my head.
We separated and took the glowing bride, one on either arm, and, with
stately, measured pace and slow, delivered up our beloved Beldaran to
the adoring King of the Isle of the Winds.
I had quite a bit on my mind at that point, so I more or less ignored
the wedding sermon of the High Priest of Belar. Anyway, if you’ve
heard one wedding sermon, you’ve heard them all. There came a point in
the ceremony, though, when something a little out of the ordinary
happened.
My Master’s Orb began to glow a deep, deep blue that almost perfectly
matched the color of Polgara’s gown. We were all terribly happy that
Beldaran and Riva were getting married, but it seemed to me that the
Orb was far more impressed with Polgara than with her sister. I’ll
take an oath that I really saw what happened next, although no one else
who was there will admit that he saw it, too. That’s probably what
half persuaded me that I’d been seeing things that weren’t really
there. The Orb, as I say, began to glow, but it always did that when
Riva was around, so there was nothing really unusual about that.
What was unusual was the fact Polgara began to glow, as well. She
seemed faintly infused with that same pale-blue light, but the
absolutely white lock at her brow was not pale. It was an incandescent
blue.
And then I seemed to hear the faint flutter of ghostly wings coming
from the back of the hall. That was the part that made me question the
accuracy of my own senses.
It seemed, though, that Polgara heard it, too, because she turned
around.
And with profoundest respect and love, she curtsied with heart-stopping
grace to the misty image of the snowy white owl perched in the rafters
at the back of the Hall of the Rivan King.
PART FOUR
POLGARA
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
All right, don’t beat me over the head with it. Of course I should