COntent with their nomadic life, but my task involved not merely
hiding and protecting the heirs, but also nurturing and molding
them. An Algar herder is quite probably the most independent and
free” of all men. Freedom’s all very well, I suppose, but it has no
Place in the make-up of an incipient king. A king – and by extension
his heir – is the least free of all men. It’s a commonplace to say that
a king wears a crown; but in reality, it’s the other way around.
My options in Algaria were severely limited. The only two places
in the entire kingdom that didn’t move around on wheels were the
Stronghold, which isn’t really a city but a baited trap set for any
Murgos who come down the Eastern Escarpment to steal horses,
and the village of Aldurford, Fleet-foot’s first capital. After Geran
married and his son, Darel, was born in 4801 I began a careful
campaign of corrupting the ngavest heir, stressing the inconvenience
of living in a moving village and being dragged along behind a
herd of cows interested only in grass. I told Darel stories about
town-life with its comfort and convenience and all the joys of
civilization as opposed to the loneliness of the nomadic life. A helpful
blizzard in the winter of 4821 convinced him that there might be
something to what I’d been telling him. After he’d spent
twenty eight hours in the saddle with a screaming wind driving snow into
his face, he began to get my drift. I encouraged him to strike up an
acquaintance with the son of our resident blacksmith, and he picked
up the rudiments of that useful trade. That’s what probably turned
the trick. There was no real need for two blacksmiths in the clan,
so Darel would have to strike out on his own if he wanted to follow
his trade.
As luck had it, he’d formed no permanent attachment to any of
the girls in our clan, and so he had nothing to hold him back when
he and I moved to Aldurford in 4825. The then current blacksmith
in Aldurford was a bit too fond of strong drink, and he spent far
more time in the local tavern than he did in his smithy. Thus, when
I set Darel up in business on the outskirts of town, he soon had
plenty of work to keep him out of mischief.
He was thirty when he finally married a local beauty, Adana, and
they were very happy together. I shouldn’t admit it, but I was
probably even happier than they were. Nomads tend not to bathe
often, and people who spend all their time with horses and cows
grow fragrant after a while. After Darel and I set up housekeeping
in Aldurford, I bathed twice a day for almost a solid year.
The marriage of Darel and Adana was a good one, and Adana
and I got along well together. I’d bought us a small house on the
outskirts of town, and Darel’s new wife and I spent- most of our time
together in the kitchen. ‘Aunt Pol?’ she said to me one afternoon.
I noticed that her face was troubled.
‘Yes, Adana?’
‘Is it possible that Darel and I are doing something wrong?’ She
blushed furiously. ‘I mean, shouldn’t I be pregnant by now? I really
want to have babies, but -‘ she faltered.
sometimes it takes a-while, dear,’ I told her. ‘It’s not exactly the
same as nailing pieces of wood together. There’s always an element
of luck involved, you know.’
‘I do so want to give Darel a son, Aunt Pol.’
‘Yes, dear,’ I said, smiling, ‘I know.’ Of course I knew. Producing
children is the ultimate expression of love for any woman, and
Adana loved her blacksmith husband with a peculiarly fervent
passion. ‘Come here a moment, dear,’ I said to her.
She obediently came to me, and I laid one hand on her lower
abdomen. Then I sent a gently probing thought out through my
fingers, and found the source of the problem almost immediately.
Adana’s problem was chemical in nature. There was an imbalance
that interfered with normal procreation.
If you’re that curious about it, you could read some medical texts,
I suppose. I wouldn’t want to rob you of the joy of discovery, so I
won’t get too specific here.
‘I’ll have to take a little trip down to the Vale, Adana,’ I told her.
‘Is it permanent, Aunt Pol?’ she asked, her eyes filled with tears.
‘Am I barren?’
‘Don’t be such a goose, Adana,’ I laughed. ‘You just need a little
tonic, that’s all. I need to look up the proper formula in one of the
books in my father’s tower, that’s all.’ The word ‘tonic’ is very useful
for physicians. Everyone knows that a tonic is good for you – and
that it doesn’t taste very good. The patients always make faces at
the taste, but they take it religiously.
The next morning I went a ways out of Aldurford, changed form
and flew on down to the Vale to spend several days with father’s
medical library. The twins told me that father was off in Sendaria
,merrily leading Chamdar around by the nose. Subtlety’s never been
one of father’s strong points, so his normal method of luring
Chamdar to another village involved the murder of any Murgo who was
handy. Chamdar, of course, assumed that the murder was an
indication that the Murgo had been hot on my trail, so he’d immediately
rush to the village in question to try to pick up that trail. Chamdar
was no fool so after about five or six of these casual murders, he
knew exactly what father was doing, but he still couldn’t ignore the
chance that this murder was significant, so he had no choice but to
follow up on it. I’m sure it entertained my father enormously, and
it did keep him out of mischief – more Or less – and the whole
business kept Chamdar so preoccupied that the idea that I might
not be in Sendaria apparently never occurred to him.
I finally tracked down the proper concoction of herbs to normalize
Adana’s chemical imbalance, and then I flew on back up to
Aldurford and mixed up a large jar of the ‘tonic’. Adana didn’t much care
for the taste of it, but she religiously drank three doses a day. it
wasn’t too long before Darel came out of their bedroom one morning
with that silly look on his face that all young men display when
they’ve just been told the happy news. ‘Adana’s going to have a
baby, Aunt Pol!’ he said excitedly. ‘I’m going to be a father!’
‘That’s nice, dear,’ I replied calmly. ‘What would you like for
breakfast?’ I just love to do that to young men when they get too
full of themselves. Parenthood in a male-dominated society is one
of those profoundly unfair things. The woman does all the work,
and the man takes all the credit.
‘Could you fix something nice for Adana, Aunt Pol?’ he almost
begged me. ‘I think she’s entitled to breakfast in bed, don’t you?’
‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed. It was going to be one of those. Every now
and then I’ve come across a young man who’s absolutely convinced
that pregnancy’s a form of invalidism, and he inevitably wants to
chain his wife to the bed for nine months. It took me several days
to clear away that idiocy.
It was in the year 4841 that Adana gave birth to a son, Carel – a
good Rivan name – and I heaved a vast sigh of relief. This was the
first time I’d encountered infertility in all the years of my
stewardship, and the possibility that it might recur was a continuing
nightmare that’s haunted me for centuries.
It was in the year 4850 that the eclipse which has become so
famous occurred. I’d seen eclipses of the sun before, but this one
was somehow quite different. Primitive man – and that term
encompasses most of humanity – looks upon an eclipse with
superstitious awe. Astronomers know what causes them, and can even
predict them with a fair degree of accuracy. The eclipse of 4850,
however, was an EVENT of the first magnitude, and its sudden
appearance had been totally unpredictable, but the simple fact that
it was necessary hasn’t yet occurred to them. All the prophecies Speak
of the eclipse, so it had to happen. It’s entirely possible that Torak
himself simply obscured the sun to fulfill the prophecy which
announced his coming. He could have done that, you know.
did you want me to run through the mathematics involved in
predicting an eclipse for you? No? I didn’t think so.
Anyway, while the world was still enveloped in that noon-time
darkness, mother’s voice startled me by its intensity. ‘This is what
we’ve been waiting for, Pol,’ she declared triumphantly. ‘Start getting