legion commanders began taking prisoners–primarily women–whom they
sold to the Nyissan slavers who, like vultures, habitually hover around
the fringes of almost any battlefield.
The whole business was sickening, but I suppose we owe those barbaric
generals a vote of thanks. If they hadn’t sold their captives the way
they did, Taiba would not have been born, and that would have been a
catastrophe. The
“Mother of the Race That Died,” as she’s called in the Mrin Codex,
absolutely had to be there when the time came, or all of our careful
preparations would have gone out the window.
Once the legions had wiped out the Marags, the Tolnedran gold hunters
rushed into Maragor like a breaking wave. Mara, however, had his own
ideas about that. I’ve never really understood Mara, but I understood
his reaction to what the Tolnedrans had done to his people very well,
and I wholeheartedly approved, even though it took us to the brink of
another war between the Gods. To put it quite simply, Maragor became a
haunted place. The spirit of Mara wailed in insupportable grief, and
horrors beyond imagination appeared before the eyes of the horde of
gold hunters who swept into the basin where Maragor had been. Most of
them went mad. The majority of them killed themselves, and the few who
managed to stumble back to Tolnedra had to be confined in madhouses for
the rest of their lives.
The spirit of Nedra was not pleased by the atrocious behavior of his
children, and he spoke very firmly with Ran Vordue about it. That
accounts for the founding of the monastery at Mar Terrin. I was rather
pleased about Mar Terrin, since the greedy merchants who’d started the
whole thing were, to a man, among the first monks who were sent there
to comfort the ghosts of the slaughtered Marags. Forcing a Tolnedran
to take a vow of poverty is probably just about the worst thing you can
do to him.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. Belar and Mara had always been
close, and the actions of the children of Nedra offended Belar
mightily. That was what was behind the Cherek raids along the
Tolnedran coast.
The war boats swept out of the Great Western Sea like packs of coursing
hounds, and the coastal cities of the empire were sacked and burned
with tiresome regularity. The Chereks, obviously acting on
instructions from Belar, paid particular attention to Tol Vordue, the
ancestral home of the Vorduvian family. Ran Vordue IV could only wring
his hands in anguish as his native city was ravaged by repeated Cherek
attacks.
Ultimately, my Master had to step in and mediate a peace settlement
between Belar and Nedra. Torak was still our main concern, and he was
quite enough to worry about without other family squabbles cropping up
to confuse the issue.
CHAPTER THIRTY
After the destruction of Maragor and after the ensuing punitive along
the Tolnedran coast by Cherek berserkers had died down a bit, an uneasy
peace settled over the western kingdoms–except for Arendia, of course.
That tedious war went on and on, in some measure perhaps because the
Arends couldn’t think of any way to stop it. An endless series of
atrocities and counter-atrocities had turned hatred into a religion in
Arendia, and the natives were all very devout.
Pol and I spent the next few centuries in the Vale, quietly pursuing
our studies. My daughter accepted without comment the fact that she
wasn’t going to age. The peculiar thing about the whole business in
her case was the fact that she really didn’t. Beldin and the twins and
I had all achieved the appearance of a certain maturity. We picked up
wrinkles and grey hair and a distinguished look. Pol didn’t. She’d
passed her three hundredth birthday, and she still looked much the same
as she had at twenty-five. Her eyes were wiser, but that’s about as
far as it went. I guess a sorcerer is supposed to look distinguished
and wise, and that implies wrinkles and grey hair. A woman with grey
hair and wrinkles is called a crone, and I don’t think Pol would have
liked that very much. Maybe we all wound up looking the way we thought
we ought to look. My brothers and I thought we should look wise and
venerable. Pol didn’t mind the wise part, but “venerable” wasn’t in
her vocabulary.
I think I might want to investigate that someday. The notion that we
somehow create ourselves is intriguing.
Anyway, I think it was early in the twenty-fifth century when Polgara
began going out on her own. I tried to put my foot down the first
time, but she rather bluntly told me to mind my own business.
“The Master told me to take care of this, father. As I recall, your
name didn’t even come up during the conversation.”
I found that remark totally uncalled for.
I waited for a half a day after she’d ridden out of the Vale on her
Algar horse, and then I followed her. I hadn’t been instructed not to,
and I was still her father. I knew that she had enormous talent, but
still– I had to be very careful, of course. With the exception of her
mother, Polgara knows me better than anybody else in the world ever
has, and I rather think she could sense my presence from ten leagues
away. I expanded my repertoire enormously as I followed her north
along the eastern border of Ulgoland. I think I altered my form on an
average of once every hour. I even went so far as to take the form of
a field-mouse one evening as I watched her set up camp. A hunting owl
quite nearly ended my career that time.
My daughter gave no sign that she knew I was following her, but with
Polgara, you never really know. She crossed the mountains to Muros,
where she turned south toward Arendia. That made me nervous.
As I’d more or less expected, she was accosted by Wacites on the road
to Vo Wacune. Arends are usually very polite to ladies, but this
particular group appeared to have left its manners at home. They
questioned her rather rudely and told her that unless she could produce
some kind of safe-conduct, they’d have to take her into custody.
You would not believe how smoothly she handled that. She was right in
the middle of delivering a blistering remonstrance, and between one
outraged word and the next, she simply put them all to sleep. I
probably wouldn’t even have noticed it if she hadn’t made that telltale
little gesture with one hand. I’ve talked with her about that several
times, but she still feels the Word that releases her Will is not quite
enough. She always seems to want to add a gesture.
The Wacites went to sleep instantly, without bothering to close their
eyes. She even put their horses to sleep. Then she rode off, humming
softly to herself. After she’d gone a couple of miles, she gathered
her Will again, said,
“Wake up,” and waved her hand once more.
The Wacites were not aware of the fact that they’d just taken a nap, so
it appeared to them that she’d simply vanished. Sorcery or magic, or
whatever you want to call it, makes Arends nervous, so they chose not
to follow her–not that they’d have known which way she’d gone
anyway.
She hadn’t given me any details about the nature of her little chore in
Arendia, so I still had to follow her. After that encounter in the
forest, though, I did so more out of curiosity than any real concern
for her safety.
I knew that she could take care of herself.
She rode on to Vo Wacune, and when she reached the gates of the city,
she imperiously demanded to be taken to the palace of the duke.
Of all the cities of ancient Arendia, Vo Wacune was by far the
loveliest.
The cattle fair at Muros was very profitable for the Wacite Arends, so
they had plenty of money to spend on architecture. There were marble
quarries in the foothills lying to the east of the city, and
marble-sheathed buildings are always prettier than structures made of
other kinds of rock.
Vo Astur was built of granite, and Vo Mimbre’s made with that
yellow-colored stone that’s so abundant in southern Arendia. It went
further than that, though. Vo Astur and Vo Mimbre were fortresses, and
they looked like fortresses, blocky and unlovely. Marble-clad Vo
Wacune, however, looked like a city seen in a dream. It had tall,
delicate spires, broad shady avenues, and many parks and gardens.
Anytime you read a fairy tale that describes some mythic city of
unspeakable beauty, you can be fairly certain that the description is
based on Vo Wacune.
I paused in a grove of trees just outside the gates and watched Pol
enter the city. Then, after a moment’s consideration, I changed form