to take Garel and Adana to the Stronghold. ‘It’s directly in Torak’s
path if he’s bound for Arendia.’
‘I’m only passing on what the Mrin says, Pol,’ Beltira replied. ‘The
Stronghold won’t fall to Torak. The Mrin’s very clear about that. There’ll
be a siege, but it won’t accomplish anything.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘It’ll be all right, Pol,’ father told me, speaking aloud. ‘You and I
have things to do. We have to go to Riva, and we can’t take Carel
to the Isle of the Winds. If he gets that close to the Orb, it’ll light
up like a new-risen sun, and every star in this end of the universe
will start to ring like a bell. Then that sword’lll attach itself to his
hand as if it’s been glued there. He isn’t the one who’s going to use
the sword, so we’ve got to keep him away from it.’ Then he sent
his thought back to the twins. ‘Have you heard-from Beldin?’ he asked
them.
‘just a few days ago,’ Belkira answered. ‘Torak’s still at Mal Zeth,
and he’s got Urvon and Zedar with him.’
,We’ve still got some time, then. They aren’t going to be able to march
the whole of Mallorea this way overnight.’
,We’ll see.’ Belkira didn’t sound nearly as optimistic as father did.
Father and I went back to our house and I instructed Adana to
circulate one of those ‘family emergency’ stories around Aldurford,
and then we left for the Stronghold.
it rained almost steadily as we rode on down across the sodden
plains of Algaria to that man-made mountain rearing up above the
grassland. I’m sure that all that rain was good for the grass, but I
didn’t care for it all that much.
The Algars have devoted eons to the construction of their
stronghold, and it shows. The walls are incredibly thick and they’re so
high that the place resembles a mountain. People throw the word
unassailable’ around without actually giving much thought to what
it means. If precision of language interests you, drop on down to
southern Algaria and take a look at the Stronghold. After that, you’ll
know exactly what ‘unassailable’ involves. I rather imagine that
even Torak quailed a bit when he first saw it.
When we arrived, father had a talk with Cho-Ram, the young
Chief of the Clan-Chiefs of Algaria. That’s a cumbersome way to
say ‘king’, but it provides a certain insight into the Algar concept
of government.
Cho-Ram’s family immediately ‘adopted’ Garel and his mother.
Adana knew just exactly who her son was, so becoming a member
of the royal family of Algaria didn’t seem all that peculiar to her.
Garel was uncomfortable with his new-found status, however, and
though he was really a bit young to know just who he really was,
I decided to bend the rules a bit and have that obligatory ‘little talk’
with him right then rather than to wait.
Once they were settled in, father, Cho-Ram and I left for the Isle
of the Winds.
I’ll apologize in advance for what will probably be a depressing
overuse of the word ‘dreary’ in forthcoming pages. There are limits
to language, though, and twenty-five years of almost continual rain
will exhaust almost anybody’s vocabulary. I could fall back on some
Of uncle Beldin’s more colorful adjectives, I suppose, but this
document might fall into the hands of children, and children aren’t
supposed to know what those words really mean.
We rode north when we left the Stronghold, skirting the eastern
frontier of Ulgoland, and we turned west when we reached the
Sendarian mountains. Then we rode on down that long river valley
to Camaar, took ship, and sailed across to the Isle of the Winds.
Since it’s almost always raining in the City of Riva anyway, the
climate change wasn’t quite so noticeable there.
Brand, the Rivan Warder, met us on the stone wharf when we
made port, and I looked rather closely at this man who was to be
one of the more significant ‘Children of Light’. He was a big man,
broad in the shoulders and massive in the chest. In that regard he
resembled a Cherek, but he didn’t behave like a Cherek. Chereks
are boisterous, but Brand was soft-spoken. Chereks tend to be
profane, but Brand’s speech was polished, urbane. Though there was
very little in the way of physical resemblance, this particular Rivan
Warder reminded me a great deal of the first one, my dear, dear
friend, Kamion.
Uncle Beldin and my father have speculated endlessly about the
peculiar repetitions which have cropped up over the eons, and
they’ve come up with a theory to explain just why things keep
happening over and over again. To boil it all down to its simplest
terms, their theory holds that ‘the accident’ – that cataclysmic
celestial explosion that disrupted the Purpose of the Universe – had
stopped all progression, and we were doomed to unending
repetition until somebody came along to set everything in motion again
by correcting the mistake.
Brand appeared to be a repetition of Kamion – and also, in a
peculiar sort of way, of Ontrose. I found that to be reassuring, since
of all the men I’d known until then, either of those two was the
most qualified to meet Torak in single combat.
Eldrig of Cherek and Rhodar of Drasnia hadn’t yet arrived at Riva,
so father, Brand, Cho-Ram and I spent many hours conferring in
that blue-draped council chamber high in one of the towers of the
citadel. Brand was so startled that his urbane manner slipped just
a bit when I told him that he was the one who was going to face
Torak in Arendia.
‘Me?’ he said in a choked voice.
Then father recited the passage from the Mrin, “‘And let him
who stands in the stead of the Guardian meet the Child of Dark in
the domain of the Bull-God.”‘ Father gave him one of those
infuriating little smirks he’s so fond of. ‘You’re standing in for the Rivan
King at the moment, Brand,’ he said, ‘so I guess that means that
you’ve been elected.’
‘I didn’t even know I was a candidate. What am I supposed
to do?’
‘We’re not sure. You will be when the time comes, though. When
you come face to face with One-eye, the Necessity’s going to take
over. It always does in these situations.’
‘I’d be a lot more comfortable if I knew what was supposed to
happen.
‘We all would, but it doesn’t work that way. Don’t worry, Brand.
You’ll do just fine.’
After Eldrig and Rhodar joined us, we got down to the business
of mapping out our strategy, and after a few meetings, King Orrnik
of Sendaria joined us. Father uses the word ‘strategy’ as if it actually
meant something, but the Alorns each knew what their traditional
roles would be. The Chereks would be our navy, the Drasnians
would be our infantry, and the Algars would be our cavalry. They
already knew what to do, so all the bleak faces and ponderous talk
were little more than a way to show off and to build morale.
After those grown-up children who ruled the northern part of the
continent finished playing, the conference concluded, and I returned
to the Stronghold. I lived quietly there despite the turmoil swirling
around in the world. Turmoil or not, I still had my task. Carel was
twenty-one years old when he married an Algar girl, Aravina, in
the year 4860, and in 4861, I delivered Aravina of a son, Celane.
As I almost always did after the delivery of one of the heirs, I
held Celane for a little while after he was born. Aravina might have
been his mother, but my face was the first one he saw. It has
something to do with our peculiar background, I think. Wolf-puppies are
not exactly like ducklings, who automatically believe that the first
moving thing they see is their mother, but there are some similarities.
It might not really make any difference, but I always try to form
that initial attachment – just to be on the safe side.
*CHAPTER30
It wasn’t long after Celane was born that father came by the
Stronghold with uncle Beldin, who’d made one of his periodic trips back
from Mallorea to fill us in on what was happening on the other side
of the Sea of the East. They visited briefly with Cho-Ram and with
Carel, Aravina and the baby, and then the three of us adjourned to
one of the squat, round towers atop the battlements of the Algars’
overgrown Murgo-trap.
My uncle looked almost absently out of one of the narrow, slitted
windows with the wind ruffling his hair. ‘Nice view,’ he noted,
staring out at the endless ocean of grass lying far below.
‘We aren’t here for sightseeing, Beldin,’ father said. ‘Why don’t
you tell Pol what’s going on in Mallorea?’
Uncle sprawled in a chair at the roughly made table of the