There was nothing she could do, though. She tried everything, but
mother was just too weak. Why weren’t you here, grandfather? You
could have done something.”
“I’m not a physician, Daran. Your aunt knows far more about that than
I do. If she couldn’t save your mother, no one could have. Does your
father have a prime minister? Somebody who takes care of things when
he’s busy?”
“You mean Brand? He’s the Rivan Warder. Father depends on him to
handle administration.”
“We’d better go talk with him. You’re going to have to take over here
until your father recovers from this.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You’re the Crown Prince, Daran, that’s why. It’s your
responsibility.
Your father’s incapacitated right now, and that drops everything into
your lap.”
“I don’t think that’s very fair. I feel just as badly about this as
father does.”
“Not quite. At least you can still talk–and think. He can’t. I’ll
help you through it, and Brand knows what has to be done.”
“Father will get better, won’t he?”
“We can hope so. It might take him awhile, though. It took me twelve
years after your grandmother died.”
“Nobody’s going to pay any attention to me when I tell them to do
something, grandfather. I don’t even have a full beard yet.”
“You’re twenty years old, Daran. It’s time you grew up. Now, let’s go
talk with Brand.”
I’ll admit that it was brutal, but somebody here on the Isle had to be
able to function. Riva quite obviously couldn’t. The Orb absolutely
had to be protected, and if word of Riva’s state got back to
Ctuchik–well, I didn’t want to think about that.
Brand was one of those solid, dependable men that the world needs more
of, and he understood the situation almost immediately. He was
unusually perceptive for an Alorn, so he was able to see not only what
I told him, but also the things I couldn’t tell him in front of Daran.
There was a distinct possibility that Iron-grip would never really
recover, and Daran would have to serve as regent. We were going to
have to bury my grandson in details to the point that his grief
wouldn’t incapacitate him, as well. I left the two of them talking and
went to Polgara’s quarters.
I knocked on her door.
“It’s me, Pol. Open up.”
“Go away.”
“Open the door, Polgara. I need to talk to you.”
“Get away from me, father.”
I shrugged.
“It’s your door, Pol. If you don’t open it right now, you’ll have to
have it replaced.”
Her face was ravaged when she opened the door.
“What is it, father?”
“You haven’t got time for this, Polgara. You can cry yourself out
later. Right now I need you. Riva can’t even think, so I’ve made
Daran regent. Somebody’s going to have to look after him, and I’ve got
something that absolutely has to be done.”
“Why me?”
“Not you, too, Pol. Why does everybody keep saying that to me?
You’re elected because you’re the only one who can handle it. You’re
going to stay here and help Daran in every way you can. Don’t let him
sink into melancholia the way his father has. The Angaraks have eyes
everywhere, and if there’s any sign of weakness here, you can expect a
visit from Ctuchik. Now, pull yourself together. Blow your nose and
fix your face. Daran’s talking with the Rivan Warder right now. I’ll
take you to where they are, and then I have to leave.”
“You’re not even going to stay for the funeral?”
“I’ve got the funeral in my heart, Pol, the same as you have. No
amount of ceremony’s going to make it go away. Now go fix your face.
You look awful.”
I’m sorry, Pol, but I had to do it that way. I had to force both you
and Daran back from the abyss of despair, and piling responsibilities
on you was the only way I could think of to do it.
I left my daughter and my grandson deep in a discussion with Brand, and
made some pretense of leaving the Isle. I didn’t, however. I went up
into the mountains behind Riva’s city instead and found a quiet
place.
Then I crumpled and wept like a broken-hearted child.
Iron-grip never fully recovered from the loss of his wife. Of course,
he was nearing sixty when Beldaran left us, so it was almost time for
Daran to take over anyway. It gave me an excuse to compel Pol to stay
on the Isle–and to keep her busy. Keeping busy is very important
during a time of bereavement. If I’d had something vital to attend to
at the time of Poledra’s death, things might have turned out quite
differently.
I suppose I realized that–dimly–when I returned to the Vale, so I
buried myself in my study of the Mrin Codex. I went through it from
one end to the other looking for some clue that might have warned me
about what was going to happen to Beldaran. Fortunately, I didn’t find
anything.
If I had, I’m sure my guilt would have overpowered me.
About six or seven years had passed when Daran’s messenger arrived in
the Vale to tell me that Riva Iron-grip had died. Bear-shoulders had
died the previous winter, and Bull-neck and Fleet-foot were both very
old men now. One of the disadvantages of a long life span is the fact
that you lose a lot of friends along the way. Sometimes I feel that my
life has been one long funeral.
Polgara returned to the Vale a year or so later, and she had a couple
of trunks full of medical books with her. There probably wasn’t
anything in those books that could have helped Beldaran, but I think
Pol wanted to make sure. I’m not certain what she’d have done if she’d
found some cure that she hadn’t known about, but she was as lucky as
I’d been.
Things went on quietly in the Vale for about fifty years. Daran got
married, had a son, and grew old, while Pol and I continued our
studies.
Our shared sense of loss brought us closer together. As I delved
deeper into the Mrin Codex, my sense of what lay ahead of us grew more
troubled, but so far as I could determine, we had everything in place
that needed to be there, so we were ready.
Beldin returned from Mallorea near the end of the twenty-first century,
and he reported that very little was going on there.
“So far as I can tell, nothing’s going to happen until Torak comes out
of his seclusion at Ashaba.”
“It’s pretty much the same here,” I replied.
“The Tolnedrans have found out about the gold in Maragor, and they’ve
built a city at a place called Tol Rane on the Marag border. They’ve
been trying to lure the Marags into trade, but they aren’t having much
luck. Is Zedar still at Ashaba?”
He nodded.
“I guess Burnt-face yearns for his company.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
We quite deliberately didn’t talk about Beldaran or about the other
friends who’d passed on. We’d all been rather intimately involved with
the family of Cherek Bear-shoulders, and we felt the sense of their
loss more keenly than we had when other, perhaps more casual
acquaintances died.
The rudimentary trade between Drasnia and Gar og Nadrak came to an
abrupt halt when the Nadraks began to mount attacks on towns and
villages in eastern Drasnia. Bull-neck’s son, Khadar, took steps, and
the Nadraks retreated back into their forests.
Then in 2115, the Tolnedrans, frustrated by the Marag indifference to
trade, took action. If I’d been paying attention, I might have been
able to intervene, but I had my mind on other things. The merchant
Princes of Tol Honeth started by instigating a nationwide rumor
campaign about the Marag practice of ritual cannibalism, and the
stories grew wilder and wilder with each retelling. Nobody really
likes the idea of cannibalism, but the upsurge of indignation in
Tolnedra was largely spurious, I suspect.
If there hadn’t been all that gold in the streams of Maragor, I don’t
think the Tolnedrans would have gotten so excited about Marag eating
habits.
Unfortunately, Ran Vordue IV had occupied the throne for only about a
year when this all came to a head, and his lack of experience
contributed significantly to what finally happened. The carefully
whipped up hysteria finally crowded him into a corner, and Ran Vordue
made the fatal mistake of declaring war on the Marags.
The Tolnedran invasion of Maragor was one of the darker chapters in
human history. The legions that swept across the border were not bent
on conquest but upon the extermination of the Marag race, and they
quite nearly succeeded. The slaughter was ghastly, and in the end only
that characteristic greed that infects all Tolnedrans prevented the
total extinction of the Marags. Toward the end of the campaign, the