“He needs to get some sleep,” Polgara insisted.
“He needs to do something else first,” I told her.
“Isn’t he a little young for chores, father?”
“He’s not too young for this one. Bring him along.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the throne room. Just bring him, Pol. Don’t argue with me. This
is one of those things that’s supposed to happen.”
She gave me a strange look.
“Why didn’t you say so, father?”
“I just did.”
“What’s happening here?” Riva asked me.
“I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. Come along.”
We trooped through the halls from the royal apartment to the Hall of
the Rivan King, and the two guards who were always there opened the
massive doors for us.
I’d been in Riva’s throne room before, of course, but the size of the
place always surprised me just a bit. It was vaulted, naturally. You
can’t really support a flat roof safely over a room of that size.
Massive beams crisscrossed high overhead, and they were held in place
by carved wooden buttresses. There were three great stone fire pits
set at intervals in the floor, and a broad aisle that led down to the
basalt throne. Riva’s sword hung point-down on the wall behind the
throne, and the Orb resting on the pommel was flickering slightly. I’m
told that it did that whenever Riva entered the hall.
We marched straight to the throne.
“Take down your sword, Iron-grip,” I said.
“Why?”
“It’s a ceremony, Riva,” I told him.
“Take down the sword, hold it by the blade, and introduce your son to
the Orb.”
“It’s only a rock, Belgarath. It doesn’t care what his name is.”
“I think you might be surprised.”
He shrugged.
“If you say so.” He reached up and took hold of the huge blade. Then
he lifted down the great sword and held the pommel out to the baby in
Polgara’s arms.
“This is my son, Daran,” he said to the Orb.
“He’ll take care of you after I’m gone.”
I might have said it differently, but Riva Iron-grip was a plainspoken
sort of fellow who didn’t set much store in ceremonies. I immediately
recognized the derivation of my grandson’s name, and I was sure that
Beldaran would be pleased.
I’m almost certain that the infant Daran had been asleep in his aunt’s
arms, but something seemed to wake him up. His eyes opened, and he saw
my Master’s Orb, which his father was holding out to him. It’s easy to
say that a baby will reach out for any bright thing that’s offered to
him, but Daran knew exactly what he was supposed to do. He’d known
about that before he was even born.
He reached out that small, marked hand and firmly laid it palm-down on
the Orb.
The Orb recognized him immediately. It burst joyously into bright blue
flame, a blue aura surrounded Pol and the baby, and the sound of
millions of exulting voices seemed to echo down from the stars.
I have it on the very best of authority that the sound brought Torak
howling to his feet in Ashaba, half a world away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Pol and I stayed on the Isle of the Winds for about a month after Daran
was born. There wasn’t anything urgent calling us back to the Vale,
and it was a rather special time in our lives.
Beldaran was up and about in a few days, and she and Pol spent most of
their time together. I don’t think I’d fully understood how painful
their separation had been for both of them. Every now and then, I’d
catch a glimpse of Polgara’s face in an unguarded moment. Her
expression was one of obscure pain. Beldaran had inexorably been drawn
away from her –first by her husband and now by her baby. Their lives
had diverged, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.
Algar Fleet-foot left for Vo Wacune after a week or so to have a talk
with the Wacite duke. Evidently, the idea that’d come to him in that
mountain pass had set fire to his imagination, and he really wanted to
explore the possibility of establishing a permanent cattle fair at
Muros.
Raising cows has its satisfactions, I suppose, but getting rid of them
after you’ve raised them is something else. If I’d paid closer
attention to the implications of his notion, I might have realized just
how profoundly it would affect history. Revenues from that fair
financed the military adventures of the Wacites during the Arendish
civil wars, and the profits to be made in Muros almost guaranteed a
Tolnedran presence there. Ultimately, I suppose, that cattle fair was
responsible for the founding of the Kingdom of Sendaria. I’ve always
felt that an economic theory of history is an oversimplification, but
in this case it had a certain validity.
Meanwhile, I hovered on the outskirts of my little family waiting for
the chance to get my hands on my grandson. You have no idea of how
difficult that was. He was Beldaran’s first child, and she treated him
like a new appendage. When she wasn’t holding him, Polgara was. Then
it was Riva’s turn. Then it was time for Beldaran to feed him again.
They passed him around like a group of children playing with a ball,
and there wasn’t room for another player in their little game.
I was finally obliged to take steps. I waited until the middle of the
night, crept into the nursery, and lifted Daran out of his cradle. Then
I crept out again. All grandparents have strong feelings about their
grandchildren, but my motives went a little further than a simple
desire to get all gooey inside. Daran was the direct result of certain
instructions my Master had given me, and I needed to be alone with him
for a few minutes to find out if I’d done it right.
I carried him out into the sitting room where a single candle burned,
held him on my lap, and looked directly into those sleepy eyes.
“It’s nothing really all that important,” I murmured to him. I refuse
to babble gibberish to a baby. I think it’s insulting. I was very
careful about what I did, of course. A baby’s mind is extremely
malleable, and I didn’t want to damage my grandson. I probed quite
gently, lightly brushing my fingertip –figuratively speaking–across
the edges of his awareness. The merger of my family with Riva’s was
supposed to produce someone very important, and I needed to know
something about Daran’s potential.
I wasn’t disappointed. His mind was unformed, but it was very quick.
I think he realized in a vague sort of way what I was doing, and he
smiled at me. I suppressed an urge to shout with glee. He was going
to work out just fine.
“We’ll get to know each other better later on,” I told him.
“I just thought I ought to say hello.” Then I took him back to the
nursery and tucked him into his cradle.
He watched me a lot after that, and he always giggled when I winked at
him. Riva and Beldaran thought that was adorable. Polgara, however,
didn’t.
“What did you do to that baby?” she demanded when she caught me alone
in the hall after supper one evening.
“I just introduced myself, Pol,” I replied as inoffensively as
possible.
“Oh, really?”
“You’ve got a suspicious mind, Polgara,” I told her.
“I am the boy’s grandfather, after all. It’s only natural for him to
like me.”
“Why does he laugh when he looks at you, then?”
“Because I’m a very funny fellow, I suppose. Hadn’t you ever noticed
that?”
She glowered at me, but I hadn’t left her any openings. It was one of
the few times I ever managed to outmaneuver her. I’m rather proud of
it, actually.
“I’m going to watch you very closely, Old Man,” she warned.
“Feel free, Pol. Maybe if I do something funny enough, I’ll even be
able to get a smile out of you.” Then I patted her fondly on the cheek
and went off down the hall, whistling a little tune.
Pol and I left the Isle a few weeks later. Anrak sailed us across the
Sea of the Winds to that deeply indented bay that lies just to the west
of Lake Sendar, and we landed at the head of the bay where the city of
Sendar itself now stands. There wasn’t a city there at the time,
though, just that gloomy forest that covered all of northern Sendaria
until about the middle of the fourth millennium.
“That’s not very promising-looking country, Belgarath,” Anrak told me
as Pol and I prepared to disembark.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have me sail you around to Darine?”
“No, this is fine, Anrak. Let’s not risk the Cherek Bore if we don’t
have to.”
“It’s not all that bad, Belgarath–or so they tell me.”