over it?’
‘For my sake, couldn’t you simulate worrying about it?’
His face creased into an expression of anticipated terror that was
absolutely grotesque. ‘How’s this?’ he asked me.
I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I give up,’ I said. Brand didn’t look
very much like Kamion had, but there were some distinct similarities
in their behavior, and some even greater similarities in their
relationship with me.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘My jaws are starting to lock up, so I don’t think
I can hold this expression for long.’
‘Your wife’s name is Aren, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘I think she and I’d better get acquainted. You and I are going to
be spending quite a bit of time together for several years, so I’d like
to make sure she doesn’t break out in a bad case of jealousy.’
‘Aren’s a sensible woman. She knows I wouldn’t do anything
improper.’
‘Brand,’ I said quite firmly, ‘I’m sure you’re a good administrator
and a fearsome warrior, but you don’t know very much about
women.’
‘I’ve been married to Aren for almost twenty years, Pol, he
objected.
‘That has absolutely nothing to do with it, Brand. She won’t be
nearly as attractive if she suddenly turns bright green, and You
won’t be nearly as robust if she starts feeding you boiled hay for
the next twenty years.’
‘She wouldn’t do that – would she?’
‘Let’s play it safe, Brand.’ I thought about it. ‘When you introduce
,me to Aren, introduce me as “Ancient Polgara”. Let’s make an issue
Of my age.
‘Be serious, Pol. You’re not old.’
‘Darlin’ boy,’ I said, fondly patting his cheek. ‘In actuality, though.
i just turned two thousand, eight hundred and sixty seven. Feel free
to flaunt that number in Aren’s face. No woman in her right mind
is jealous of an old crone.’
‘Anybody who calls you that will answer to me. Pol,’ he said
fiercely.
‘We’re getting along better and better, Brand.’ I smiled at him.
‘This is just a subterfuge to pull Aren’s teeth before she bites you.’
‘I think you’re exaggerating the danger, Pol, but I’ll be guided by
you in this matter.’
‘An’ aren’t Y’ the dearest boy-o in th’ whole wide world t’ say
so?o
‘I’m sorry, Pol, but I don’t understand why you’re speaking so
oddly.’
‘It’s a long story, Brand – a very long story. Someday when we
have lots of time. I’ll tell it to you.’
After father and I’d bullied the Alorn kings into moving their
headquarters to Tol Honeth, he and I went to the Stronghold to
have a look at the defenses.
There was an unpleasant surprise waiting for me when we
reached the Stronghold. My recent meetings with Gods had filled
me with the sense of Destiny and Purpose that implies order. It
does not, however, take pure accident into account. Carel, heir to
Iron-grip’s throne, had ridden out with some Algar friends to scout
the surrounding grasslands for advance parties of the approaching
invaders. Garel’s horse had stumbled, and Carel had been thrown
from his saddle. Everyone who rides a horse falls off now and then.
It’s embarrassing, but usually nothing more. This time, however,
Garel landed wrong, and the fall broke his neck, killing him
instantly.
His wife, Aravina, was nearly mad with grief, and her mother-in
law, Adana, seemed to be at her wits’ end trying to deal with that.
my approach was somewhat simpler. I drugged Aravina into near
insensibility and kept her that way. My primary concern – as always
– was the little boy, Celane. I’ve had a lot of practice comforting
little boys over the centuries, so I knew what had to be done.
Someday, perhaps, I’ll discover a way to deal with my own sorrow.
Torak’s army was approaching the Stronghold, however, so I
didn’t really have the leisure to grieve. Celane was almost six years
old now, but that really isn’t very old. The current situation,
however, dictated a break in tradition. I sat Celane down and told him
just exactly who he really was.
The childhood and early adolescence of an orphaned heir has
always been the most dangerous time in my ongoing task. I’d taken
an oath to defend and protect the Rivan line, and a five- or
six-year old boy whose father has died is the sole receptacle of that blood-line.
Little girls are sensible. Their period of irrationality comes later.
Little boys, on the other hand, become irrational almost as soon as
they learn to walk. Garion, for example, took up rafting on a pond
at Faldor’s farm without bothering to learn how to swim first. if I
sometimes seem a bit hysterical, you can probably lay the blame for
that condition on about fourteen centuries of trying to keep little
boys from killing themselves. It was in the hope of impressing
Celane with the importance of being at least a little bit careful that I
told him of his heritage, stressing the fact that if he managed to get
himself killed, the line would die with him. He seemed to
understand, but with little boys, you never really know.
Then came that rainy evening when mother’s voice pulled my
attention from the passages of the Mrin Codex that seemed to
concentrate on the current situation. ‘Polgara,’ she said in an oddly
gentle tone, ‘it’s time. Come up to the northern battlements. I’ll meet you
there.’
I laid the scroll aside and left my room deep inside the thick walls
of the Stronghold to climb the seemingly endless stairs up to the
parapet atop the mountainous structure.
It was drizzling rain, and there was just enough wind blowing to
make things decidedly unpleasant up there. Mother, garbed in that
plain brown peasant dress, stood at the battlements looking out into
the rainy night. She was actually there, and I wasn’t as yet that
accustomed to her real presence.
‘I’m here, mother,’ I said.
‘Good,’ she replied, her golden eyes a mystery. ‘Just relax, POl.
UL told me exactly what to do, so follow my lead as we do this.’
‘Of course.’ I was apprehensive, nonetheless.
‘It won’t hurt, Pol,’ she said, smiling faintly.
‘I know, but doing something for the first time always makes me
just a little nervous.’
‘Look upon it as an adventure, Pol. Now, then, first we make the
image of the owl, and the details have to match rather closely
down to the last feather, actually.’
It took us quite a while that first time. We were both familiar
with the generic owl, but we had to reconcile a number of minute
differences to form the image of an individual bird.
,What do you think?’ mother asked after we’d dealt with several
inconsistencies.
,It looks owlish enough to me.’
‘I rather thought so myself. Now then, we have to do this
simultaneously, so don’t hurry. The actual merger’s going to start before
we enter the image. It begins in the instant we become fluid, or so
UL tells me, and the merger’s almost complete before we go into the
bird-shape.’
‘I think I see why, yes.’
‘This won’t be easy for you, Pol. I’ve been inside your mind often
enough to be very familiar with you, but you’ll be encountering
things you haven’t experienced before. I wasn’t born human, so
there’s a lot of wolf left in me. I have a few instincts you probably
won’t like.’
I smiled faintly. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’
‘All right, then. Let’s begin.’
I can’t really describe it, so I won’t even try. There’s a moment
during the process of changing form that I hadn’t really paid much
attention to. It’s that very brief instant when your entire being is in
transition from your own form to that other one. Mother’s use of
the term ‘fluid’ is really quite precise. In a sense, you’re melting
down so that you can flow from one form to the other. It was at
that point that mother and I merged, and it was our combined
awareness that flowed into our owl.
Mother’s suggestion that I might find her a bit strange was
a serious understatement, but I think she overlooked the fact that
even though I’d never adopted the form of a wolf, I was,
nonetheless, hereditarily part wolf myself at the deepest levels of my
being.
I rather suspect that merging was easier for me than it’d been for
Mother. I still remembered that time before Beldaran and I’d been
born, so close proximity – even union – was not totally alien to me.
On second thoughts, though, mother had probably been born as
One of a litter, so she’d been through that herself.
An idle thought came to me even as mother and I flowed into
the owl, and the answer, naturally, was right there. I did, as a matter
of fact, have aunts and uncles I’d never known, and now I did know
them – and love them – even as mother had when they were all