cows for Hattan before they ever reached Muros. The sight of all
that prime beef that wasn’t available to them drove the Tolnedrans
absolutely wild.
In time, Hattan invited Geran and me to meet his family. His
wife, Layna, was a plump, giddy-seeming Sendarian lady who was
far more shrewd than she appeared on the surface. Geran was polite
to her, but most of his attention was locked onto Eldara, a tall,
raven-haired beauty of his own age. Eldara seemed just as taken
with him, and the two of them sat looking at each other without
saying a word in much the same way as Beldaran and Riva had. I
caught a very strong odor of ‘tampering’ in the wind. Destiny – or
prophecy, call it what you will – was obviously taking a hand in
this matter.
‘They seem to be getting along fairly well,’ Hattan noted after
Geran and Eldara had silently gazed into each other’s faces for an
hour or so.
‘But they aren’t saying anything,’ Layna protested.
‘Oh, yes they are, Layna,’ Hattan said to his wife. ‘You just aren’t
listening. I suppose we’d better start making arrangements.’
‘Arrangements for what?’ Layna demanded.
‘For the wedding, dear,’ I told her.
‘What wedding?’
‘That one,’ her husband said, pointing at the silent young couple.
‘They’re only sixteen, Hattan. They’re too young to get married.’
‘Not really,’ her husband disagreed. ‘Believe me, Layna, I’ve seen
this sort of thing in the past. Let’s run them through the marriage
ceremony before they start getting creative. This is Sendaria, my love,
and the proprieties are sort of important here. Just because you and
I got an early start doesn’t need to set a precedent for the children,
does it?,
She blushed furiously.
‘Yes, Baroness?’ Hattan said to me with one raised eyebrow.
‘Nothing,’ I replied.
We postponed the wedding for a month or so for the sake of
appearances, and Hattan, Layna, and I concentrated very hard on
making sure that the children were never left alone together. As I
recall, I caught Geran climbing out his bedroom window in the
middle of the night five or six times during that interminable month.
Hattan took a more direct approach. He simply installed iron bars
on Eldara’s window.
It was about noon on an overcast day when Hattan stopped by
while Layna was keeping watch over our youthful enthusiasts. ‘I
think we need to talk,’ he said.
‘Of course. Was it about the dowry?’
‘Did you want a herd of cows?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Then we can skip over that. Pelera’s not your real name, is it,
MY Lady? You’re actually Belgarath’s daughter, Polgara, aren’t you?’
I stared at him, stunned. ‘How did you find that out, Hattan?’
‘I’ve got eyes, Lady Polgara, and I use them. I’m an alorn, so I
know all the stories. They describe you very precisely. They don’t
really do you justice, though. You’re probably the most beautiful
woman in the world, but that’s beside the point. Geran’s not really
your nephew, is he?’
‘Sort of,’ I replied. ‘The relationship’s more complicated, but we
simplify it for the sake of convenience.’
‘All right,’ the lean Algar said, ‘then I know who he is, too. Don’t
worry, Lady Polgara, I know how to keep things to myself. We’re
going to have to take some precautions, aren’t we?’
‘I can handle it, Hattan.’
‘I’m sure you can, but I’d like to lend a hand anyway. Muros
might not be the best place in Sendaria for the children to live, you
know. There are too many foreigners here. Sulturn or Medalia would
probably be safer.’ He squinted at me. ‘I think you’re going to have
to move around a lot, you know. If the stories I’ve heard about You
are true, you aren’t going to age the way other people do, so you
probably shouldn’t stay in one place for more than ten years, and
I’d stay clear of the nobility, if I were you. People notice baronesses
and other high-born ladies, and you don’t want to be noticed.’
‘You’ve thought your way completely through this, haven’t you,
Hattan?’
‘My daughter’s involved too, so I’ve brooded about it a bit. Would
a suggestion offend you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘When you get on out into the future, you might think about
apprenticing these nephews you’re looking after to various
craftsmen. A carpenter doesn’t have to explain why he moves from town
to town. Craftsmen move around, and nobody’s really curious about
why – as long as the craftsman’s good at what he does. Every town’s
got a carpenter or two, a couple of brick-masons, an apothecary
shop, and so on. A tradesman’s a fixture, and he’s invisible to
strangers.’
‘Hattan, you’re a treasure!’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, Lady Polgara.’
‘You’ve just solved a problem I’ve been beating myself over the
head with for several years now. You’ve just told me how to keep
a long line of young men invisible, and invisibility’s very difficult.
I’ve tried it, so I know.’
‘I think your biggest problem’s going to be with the young men
themselves,’ he said. ‘It might be safer not to even tell them who
they really are. The only trouble with that is that when the important
one comes along, he’s going to have to know, because there are
things he’s going to have to do – and he might just have to do some
of them at short notice.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Interesting problem
you’ve got there, Polgara, but I’ll let you work it out.’
‘Thanks, Hattan,’ I replied sarcastically.
‘No charge, my Lady.’ Then he laughed.
The wedding took place in late summer that year. Hattan and I
overrode Layna’s urges in the direction of extravagance and
ostentation. My Algar friend and I were positive that Geran and Eldara
would probably have only vague sketchy memories of the ceremony
anyway, and there were some obvious reasons for keeping the whole
affair rather quiet. In our circumstances, hiring the town-crier to
shout the news to the roof-tops of Muros wouldn’t have been the
course of prudence. Hattan had some difficulty persuading his wife
that there was no real need for a wedding that’d go down in local
history books, and I diverted her rather smoothly by raising the
Issue of Eldara’s wedding gown. I drew rather heavily on the designs
Of my instructress in the healing arts for that gown. I didn’t exactly
COPY Arell’s design of Beldaran’s wedding gown – at least not down
to the last stitch , but I’ll confess to a bit of constructive plagiarism
in the business. The fact that Eldara had raven-black hair while
Beldaran’s hair had been pale blonde did dictate a few subtle
variations but all in all, the gown turned out rather well, I thought.
Eldara was absolutely radiant when her father escorted her into the
wedding chapel, and Geran’s reaction was very much the same as
his ultimate paternal grandfather’s had been.
As I recall, I did choke just a bit when the priest who conducted
the ceremony invoked the blessings of the Gods at the conclusion
of the ceremony. Sendarian religion is tolerant to a fault, and
ecumenicism lies at its very core. Religious tolerance is all well and
good, I suppose, but when the kindly old priest asked Torak to bless
a union that would ultimately produce the man destined to kill him,
I quite nearly went into a seizure. Hattan, who was sitting between
his weepy wife and me, took me firmly by the wrist. ‘Steady,’ he
murmured.
‘Do you know what that priest just did?’ I whispered in a strangled
tone.
He nodded. ‘It was a little inappropriate, I suppose, but it’s only
a formality. I’m sure that Torak’s too busy to really be paying
attention.’ He paused. ‘You might want to keep an eye out for a dragon
lurking around the outskirts of town for the next few weeks, though.’
‘A dragon?’
‘Don’t the Murgos call Torak “the Dragon-God of Angarak”? I’m
sure you could deal with him, Pol, but I’d really rather he didn’t
come to pay us a call. Cows are very skittish, and if Torak starts
flying over Muros belching fire, it could be very bad for business.’
‘Are you trying to be funny, Hattan?’
‘Me? Why, whatever gave you that idea, Pol?’
*CHAPTER27
Geran and Eldara were deliriously happy, of course. I’ve noticed
over the years that these pre-ordained marriages usually are. The
Purpose of the Universe has ways of rewarding those who do what
it wants them to do. In time – and it actually wasn’t a very long
time – Eldara started throwing up every morning, so I knew that
things were proceeding normally.
I delivered her of a son in the early summer of 4013 with a certain
satisfaction. Even though Geran and his new wife had done all the
work, I took a certain pride in the fact that I’d made all the
arrangements and that I was performing my task satisfactorily. The Rivan