asunder. Now is he outcast and despised, and he doth feel his
isolation most keenly. Oft doth he talk at some length with his
disciples – random talk with no purpose other than to fend off his
aching sense of isolation. At this particUlar time, his most constant
confidant is Zedar the apostate, and their conversations are wide
ranging.’
I took it up from there. ‘Then mother and I will perch in the rafters
of his rusty tin palace and eavesdrop on all his plans, strategies, and
goals?’
‘The information thou must obtain doth have no bearing on
military matters, Polgara. Torak knows of thee. Indeed, thou and thy
father do fill his thoughts. He has a design of which thou must be
aware. Thine awareness of that design shall be a preparation for a
choice which thou wilt be obliged to make at some day in the future.
I would not alarm thee for all this world, but the fate of the universe
shall hinge upon thy choice.’
Holy UL may not have intended to alarm me, but he did
nonetheless. ‘Couldst thou not advise me of thy son’s design, most Holy?’
I asked. ‘Coming face to face with Torak – even if he can’t see me
– isn’t the sort of thing I look forward to.’
‘Thou art braver than whole armies, Polgara,’ he said, ‘and we
all have supreme confidence in thee.’
‘I’ll be with you, Pol,’ mother assured me. ‘I won’t let Torak hurt
you.’
‘I’m not really worried about that, mother, I’d just rather not be
compelled to look into that diseased mind.’ I realized what I’d just
said. ‘Nothing personal intended there, most Holy,’ I apologized to
UL.
‘Thou hast not offended me, Polgara.’ Then he sighed. ‘Torak hath
‘lot always been as he is now,’ he said sadly. ‘Through no fault of
its own, the Orb hath brutalized and corrupted my son. He is lost
to me and to his brothers, Polgara, and his loss doth sear our souls.’
Then he rose to his feet. ‘Thy mother – as always – shall instruct
thee in this. Be guided by her, and steel thine heart for that which
thou art doomed to discover.’
And then he was gone.
‘He didn’t even touch his tea,’ mother complained.
Father and I left the caverns of Ulgo the following morning, and
When we came out once more into the snow-clogged and empty
City of Prolgu, he suggested that we might as well have a look at
Torak’s army before returning to Riva. I didn’t come right out and
say it, but his proposal startled me just a bit. In ordinary times father
can best be described as a monument to indolence. Once I even
his own industriousness by saying, ‘Sorry, brothers, I’m feeling sort
of Belgarathy today.’ The twins, of course, knew exactly what he
meant by that. When a situation arises that requires his attention,
though. father can go for weeks with little food and almost no sleep
at all. His almost superhuman endurance in those situations never
fails to astound me. As a physician, I know that ‘storing up sleep’
is a physically impossible absurdity. Father, however, has never
made a study of medicine, so the term ‘physical impossibility,
doesn’t have much meaning for him.
Now there’s something for you to think about. If you don’t know
that you can’t do something, isn’t there a remote possibility that
you’ll go ahead and do it anyway in absolute defiance of physical
law? That might be one of the drawbacks of education. If you don’t
know that you can’t pick yourself up by the scruff of the neck and
hold yourself at arm’s length, maybe you can.
I wonder if I could get Mandorallen to try that.
When father and I flew on down out of the Ulgo mountains, we
were both pleased to discover that the rain had temporarily let up,
though the sky remained cloudy and threatening.
There’s a kind of unreality about the world when it’s viewed from
a great height. Things which have enormous importance to those
on the ground seem to shrink into insignificance. Men and their
animals look like tiny creeping insects, and I’ve yet to see a national
boundary etched across the face of the earth. I was startled
nonetheless by the sheer size of the Angarak army crawling across the bland
face of the Algarian plain- It’s been estimated that Torak invaded
Drasnia with a half-million soldiers, and his campaign there hadn’t
significantly reduced that number. As father and I drifted overhead,
we saw the Algar cavalry units busily correcting that with their
typical slash and run tactics. The folded – even wrinkled – surface
of the plain provided many places of concealment for the small
cavalry units, and they could – and did – come boiling out of those
gullies and ravines at a dead run to amputate bits and pieces of the
Angarak army as Torak doggedly lumbered southward toward the
Stronghold. Taken individually, these little nicks and cuts weren’t
really significant, but viewed in the aggregate, they could best be
described as a continuing hemorrhage. I doubt that Torak even”
realized it, but he was slowly bleeding to death as he plodded south.
The Angarak attempts to pursue and chastise their attackers Only
made things worse, since the Angarak pursuers rarely returned. I
saw cavalry tactics at their finest down there. The initial assault of
the Algar horsemen was relatively meaningless – a slap in the face,
so to speak. Its only purpose was to sting the crack units of Angarak
cavalry into pursuit – a pursuit that drew them into ambushes laid
for them in various shallow ravines out beyond the edge of the
main body of the army. Cho-Ram’s horsemen were methodically
skimming the cream off Torak’s army.
When that process started to become tedious, the Algars entertained
themselves by stampeding oceans of cattle right over the top
of the assembled Malloreans, Murgos, Nadraks and Thulls. From a
strategic point of view, Algaria was nothing more than a vast trap,
and the Dragon-God had sprung it on himself.
It went on and on and on, tedious repetitions of the same ghastly
little play. After a day or so, I’d seen enough, but father lingered.
He seems to revel in that sort of thing for some reason.
On the third evening we flew some distance out to the flank of
the invading army, and after we’d settled to earth I rather tartly
told my bloodthirsty parent that I’d seen enough.
‘I suppose you’re right, Pol,’ he said almost regretfully. ‘We’d
probably better get on back to the Isle of the Winds to let the alorns
know what’s afoot.’ Then he laughed. ‘You know, I think we all
underestimated Algar Fleet-foot. This country of his is a stroke of
pure genius. He deliberately turned his people into Nomads so that
there wouldn’t be any towns. The whole of Algaria’s nothing but a
vast emptiness with grass growing on it. The Algars don’t have
towns to defend, so they can give up huge pieces of their country
without a second thought. They know that after the Angaraks have
moved on, they can return. The only place of any significance in
the whole silly kingdom is the Stronghold, and that’s not even a
city. It’s nothing but bait.’
‘I always rather liked Algar,’ I admitted. ‘Under different
circumstances, I might have set my cap for him. He could have made a
very interesting husband.’
‘Polgara.’ Father actually sounded shocked, and I laughed about
that for quite some time – long enough, anyway, to make him
grouchy. I love to do that to him.
The weather went to pieces again that night, and father and I left
Algaria the next morning in a drizzling rain. We crossed the
Sendarian mountains and arrived at Riva on the Isle of the Winds two
days later.
The Alorn Kings were most concerned about the second Angarak
army commanded by Urvon. I guess that you can’t really enjoy a war
if you have to keep looking back over your
shoulder for unexpected
enemies. The Alorns were also a bit upset when father suggested
that we pick up our headquarters and move it to Tol Honeth. Alorns
can be such children sometimes. They had this splendid war going
on, and they selfishly didn’t want to share it.
I now knew Brand well enough to speak candidly with him.
‘Aren’t we being just a little blase about this, my friend?’ I suggested.
‘You’re going to meet a God in single combat, and you’re shrugging
it off as if it were some meaningless little chore – like fixing a fence
or chopping wood for the evening fire.’
‘There’s not much point in getting excited about it, Pol,’ he said
in his deep, soft voice. ‘It’s going to happen whether I like it or not.
I can’t hide and I can’t run away, so why should I lose any sleep