freely, my daughter?’ he asked me intently.
This was the task I’d accepted at Beldaran’s wedding. I’d sworn
to take it up then, and nothing had really happened in the past two
thousand or so years to make me change my mind. A great many
things fell into place at that point. In a sense, the two eons which
had passed since I’d first pledged myself to take up this task had
merely been preparation – an education, if you will. Now I was
ready to be Geran’s guardian and protector ~ no matter where
EVENTS would take him or the line which would descend from
him. I’d already pledged my word to accept this responsibility, but
evidently the Master wanted confirmation. ‘I accepted this task
freely once before, Master,’ I replied, laying my hand rather
possessively on Geran’s shoulder, ‘and I accept it freely now. Truly, I shall
guard and guide the Rivan line for so long as it be necessary. Yea,
even unto the end of days, if need be.’
As I said it, I felt a peculiar sort of surge, and I seemed to hear a
vast ringing sound echoing from the farthest star. Quite clearly my
affirmation of my previous vow was an EVENT of the first
magnitude. I’d done a few fairly important things before, but this was the
Hurst time that the stars had ever applauded me.
‘Well then,’ I said to my somewhat awed family, ‘now that we’ve
settled that, supper’s almost ready, so why don’t you gentlemen go
wash your hands while I set the table?’
*CHAPTER26
if you choose to look at it in a certain light, my acceptance of the
task was automatic, even instinctive. My little epiphany on board
the ship that carried us from the Isle of the Winds as I’d comforted
the grief-stricken Geran lay at the core of my willingness to devote
the rest of my life to the descendants of my sister and Riva Iron-grip.
The line was of my blood – my pack, if you will and rearing and
protecting each child in the line was an obligation I’d have accepted
even had the Master not extracted that pledge from me.
But there was another, less wolfish, reason for my ready
acceptance. I was fully convinced that the death of Ontrose had closed
certain doors to me. I was certain that I’d never marry or have
children of my own. The rearing of my sister’s descendants would
fill that aching emptiness.
The following morning I was seized with an almost overpowering
urge to leave the Vale. It was as if my reaffirmation of my pledge
had opened a whole new chapter in my life, and I wanted to get
on with it. Looking back, however, I’ll confess that my motives were
a little less admirable. My pledge had made Geran mine, and I
wanted to keep him all to myself.
Isn’t it odd the way our minds work sometimes?
Anyway, my sandy-haired charge and I left the Vale after a few
days, and the dependable, mottled Squire carried us back up into
the Sendarian mountains. I was really in no great hurry to get home,
So our pace was leisurely. I’m sure Squire approved of that. I’ve
observed that horses lie a lot. A horse loves to run, but he always
behaves as if it’s a terrible imposition when you ask him to do that.
‘What was it like, Aunt Pol?’ Geran asked me one evening after
supper when we’d spread our blankets on the ground, the camp-fire
had burned down to embers, and the close and friendly darkness
was enfolding us. ‘I mean, what was it like to grow up in the Vale
surrounded by magic and sorcerers the way you were?’
‘My sister and I hadn’t really known any other kind of life, Geran,
so it didn’t really seem particularly unusual to us.’
‘She was my grandmother, wasn’t she? – your sister, I mean.’
‘Your ultimate grandmother, yes.’ I stepped around some things
rather carefully. Geran didn’t really need to know about mother just
yet. I lay back and looked up at the stars. ‘Our father was off in
Mallorea when we were born,’ I told him. ‘He and Bear-shoulders
and the boys were stealing the Orb from Torak.’
‘It wasn’t really stealing, was it? I mean, the Orb belonged to us
in the first place after all. Torak’s the one who stole it.’
‘Well, he stole it from the Master, but it amounts to the same
thing, I guess. Anyway, my sister and I were raised by uncle Beldin.’
Geran giggled. ‘I like him,’ he said.
‘Yes, I noticed.’ Then I continued with a slightly sanitized version
of my childhood in the Vale. Geran listened eagerly. If you want a
little boy’s undivided attention, tell him stories. After a while,
however, he drifted off to sleep, and I fell silent. I watched the endless
progression of the stars for a while, noting that a couple of the
constellations had moved since I’d last taken a good look at them.
And then I too slept.
When we reached my house I noticed something peculiar. I’d
visited it any number of times since I’d buried it in roses, and it’d
always seemed almost unbearably lonely. It was an empty place
that hadn’t been meant to be empty, but now that sense of loneliness
wasn’t there any more. Geran was there with me, and that was
all I really needed. I decided that we could probably forego the
house-cleaning. Geran had learned to live with the loss of his family,
and he now seemed to want to spend most of his time in my library
with my copies of the Mrin and Darine. Eventually, he reacted to
the Mrin with the same sense of frustration it stirred in all of us. ‘It
doesn’t make sense, Aunt Pol!’ he exclaimed one evening, banging
his fist on the table.
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘It isn’t supposed to.’
‘Why do we all waste so much time on it then?’
‘Because it tells us what’s going to happen in the future.’
‘But if we can’t make any sense out of it, how does that help us.
‘Oh, we can make some sense out of it if we work with it. It’s all
jumbled together that way to keep people who don’t have any
business knowing what’s going to happen from finding out.’
,You mean it’s written in code?’
‘You could put it that way, yes.’
,i think I’ll stick with the other one – the Darine. It’s easier to
read and it’s not so splotched up with ink-smears.’
‘Whatever suits you, Geran.’
I was more than a little surprised – and pleased – to discover that
my young nephew had a surprisingly quick mind. He’d been raised
as an Alorn, and you don’t really expect to find brains in an alorn
– except for the Drasnians, of course. A Drasnian’s intelligence,
however, is devoted almost exclusively to swindling his neighbors,
so he doesn’t waste it on things philosophical.
Geran and I lived quietly in our secluded house for several years.
He needed time to grow up, and I needed time to get used to my
new occupation. He was about twelve or so, and his voice was
beginning to change, when a notion came to him that was
surprisingly acute. ‘Do you know what I think, Aunt Pol?’
‘What was that, dear?’
‘I’ve been working on this for a while, and it sort of seems to me
that you and grandfather and our uncles live outside of time and
the world the rest of us live in. It’s almost as if you lived someplace
else – only it’s right here at the same time.’
I laid my book aside. ‘Go on, Geran,’ I urged him.
‘This other world you live in is all around the rest of us, but we
can’t see it. There are different rules there, too. You all have to live
for thousands of years, and you have to learn how to use magic,
and you have to spend a lot of time reading old books that none of
us can understand. Then, every once in a while, you have to come
out into our world to tell the kings what they’re supposed to do,
and they have to do it, whether they like it or not. Anyway, I’ve
been sort of wondering why. Why do we need two worlds this way?
Why not just one? Then it came to me. It’s even more complicated
than I thought, because there aren’t just two worlds, but three. The
Gods live in one world – out there among the stars – and ordinary
people like me live right here on this one where nothing very
unusual ever happens. You and grandfather and the uncles live in
the third one – the one that’s between the world of the Gods and
the world of ordinary people. You live there because you’re our