he’s supposed to do, and the title can be passed on. One Child of
Light will take the sword down off the wall. another will carry it
here from Riva, and it’ll be handed over to Brand. They’ll be passing
the title along at the same time they pass the sword.’
he said.
‘I think you’re straining to make it all fit, Pol,’
‘Can you come up with anything else?’
‘Not really. I guess I’d better go to the Isle.’
‘Oh? What for?’
‘To get the sword, of course. Brand’s going to need it.’ He’d
obviously leapt to a conclusion that seemed to me to have several
large holes in it. He seemed to believe that he was going to be the
Child of Light who’d take the sword down off the wall in the Hall
of the Rivan King. By the time he got to Riva. though, mother’d
already taken care of that, and the sword played no part in it. All
glowing with blue light, she’d entered the Hall, removed the Orb
from the pommel of Iron-grip’s sword, and embedded it in the
center of a shield. I rather suspect that took some of the wind out
Of father’s sails. I also suspect that he began
to understand – dimly
that mother wasn’t quite as dead as he’d believed. He seemed a
bit crestfallen when he returned to Tol Honeth.
It was in the spring of 4874 that uncle Beldin returned again from
southern Cthol Murgos to report that Urvon had left Rak Hagga to
begin his trek across the continent. If General Cerran’s timetable
was correct, we had less than a year to complete our
preparations.
One of those was already in progress. Brand reported to father that
he was ‘hearing voices’. This isn’t the sort of thing a physician really
wants to hear. When someone announces that he ‘hears voices’, the
physician normally reserves a room for the poor fellow in the nearest
asylumf since it’s a clear indication that the patient’s brains have
sprung a leak.
Brand, however, hadn’t gone crazy. The voice he was hearing was
that of the Necessity. and it was very carefully coaching him in
exactly what he was going to have to do during his face-to-face
confrontation with Torak. That confrontation was fast approaching.
but for right now, our unseen friend was more concerned about
the deployment of the Tolnedran forces. Quite obviously, General
Cerran’s legions would tip the balance at Vo Mimbre. The problem,
of course, was that the legions were in the south preparing to keep
Urvon from reaching Vo Mimbre in time for the battle. The Necessity
assured Brand that Urvon wasn’t going to be a problem, but
convincing Cerran of that fact immediately raised yet another problem.
‘God told me so’ doesn’t really carry much weight in any argument.
And the declaration that ‘I changed myself into a bird and flew on
down there to have a look’ carries even less. We decided not to do
it that way.
Then, in the early spring of 4875, Torak gave up at the Stronghold
and started marching west. If Cerran’s timetable held true, the
Angaraks would be at the gates of Vo Mimbre in about a month and a
half – and the legions were still in the south. As I’d rather expected
he would, UL took a hand in things at that point. The cat-eyed
Ulgos came out of their caves by night and wreaked havoc in
Torak’s sleeping army. The Angaraks didn’t move very fast after
that.
It was while the Angaraks were cautiously inching their way
across the mountains of Ulgo that Uncle Beldin gleefully advised
my father that an unnatural snowstorm had buried Urvon and
Ctuchik up to the ears in the great desert of Araga. And that,
incidentally, explained the quarter-century-long rainstorm that’d
plagued us all. The weather patterns had changed just in
preparation for the blizzard that stopped Torak’s second army dead in its
tracks.
Father was chortling with glee when he conveyed Beldin’s
message to me, but he stopped chortling when I pointed out the fact
that the blizzard wouldn’t mean anything until General Cerran knew
that it’d happened. ‘I don’t think he’ll just take our word for it,
father,’ I predicted. ‘He’ll demand proof, and there’s no way we can
provide that proof – unless you’d like to pick him up and carry him
down to that desert so that he can see for himself. He won’t abandon
that southern frontier just on our say-so – particularly since both he
and Ran Borune know that we’d really like their company at VO
Mimbre.’
We presented our information as having come from our Usual
reliable sources’, and, as I’d suspected he might, General Cerran
received the news with profound scepticism.
Eventually, it was Ran Borune who suggested a compromise. Half
of the southern legions would come north, and the other half would
stay where they were. Cerran was a soldier, so even when he
received orders that he didn’t entirely agree with, he expanded them
to make them work better’ He added the eight ceremonial legions
from Tol Honeth and nineteen training legions to make it appear
that the Tolnedran presence at Vo Mimbre was larger than it really
was. The ceremonial legions probably couldn’t march more than a
mile without collapsing, and the raw recruits in the training legions
could probably walk, but marching in step was still beyond their
capabilities. When Torak looked out the window of his rusty tin
palace, though, he’d see about seventy-five thousand legionaries
bearing down on him, and he’d have no way of knowing that better
than a third of them wouldn’t know which end of a sword was
which. The Chereks would ferry the southern legions and the
imaginary ones from around Tol Honeth and Tol Vordue to the
River Arend. We could only hope that they’d get there in time.
Then the twins arrived, and they privately advised us that the
battle would last for three days and that – as we’d expected – the
whole issue would be decided by the meeting of Brand and Kal
Torak. The chore facing my father and me was fairly simple. All we
had to do was make sure that Torak didn’t reach Vo Mimbre before
all our forces were in place, and that probably wouldn’t be much
more difficult than reversing the tides or stopping the sun in its
orbit.
The two of us left Tol Honeth as evening fell over the marble city,
and we entered a grove of birch-trees a mile or so north of town.
‘You’d better tell him that you’ll be using our owl during all this, Pol,’
Mother’s voice suggested. ‘He won’t like it very much, but let’s get him
into the habit of seeing the owl from time to time.’
‘I’ll take care of it, mother,’ I replied. ‘I’ve come up with a way to head
of-all those tiresome arguments.’
‘You have? Some day you’ll have to share that with me.’
‘just listen, mother,’ I suggested. ‘Listen and learn.’
‘That was tacky, Pol, very tacky.’
‘I’m glad you liked it.’
Father was squinting off toward the west. ‘We’ll lose the light
before long,’ he noted. ‘Oh, well, there aren’t any mountain ranges
between here and Vo Mimbre, so we’re not likely to crash into
anything in the dark.’
. ‘You’re not going to like this, father,’ I warned him, ‘but I’ve been
instructed to use the form of that snowy owl between now and the
EvENT ‘ so you’ll have to grit your teeth and accept it. I am going
to follow my instructions, whether you like it or not.’
‘Am I permitted to ask who’s giving you those instructions?’ he
grated.
‘Of course you can ask, father,’ I said graciously. ‘Don’t hold your
breath waiting for an answer, though.’
‘I hate this,’ he complained.
I patted his cheek. ‘Be brave, Old Man,’ I said.
Then I shimmered into that familiar form.
it was well past midnight when the two of us came to roost atop
the battlements of Aldorigen’s palace in the center of Vo Mimbre.
The sentries pacing the battlements may have noticed a pair of birds
soaring in, but they didn’t pay much attention. They were on the
lookout for men, not birds. We settled in some deep shadows near
the head of a flight of stairs, and as soon as a plodding sentry had
passed, we resumed our natural forms, went on down the stairs,
and proceeded directly to the throne-room to wait for Aldorigen.
‘Why don’t you let me handle this, father?’ I said. ‘I’m more familiar
with Arends than you are, so I won’t offend them. Besides,
Aldorigen’s already afraid of me, so he’ll pay closer attention if I’m the
one who’s talking.’
‘Feel free, Pol. Trying to talk with Arends always makes me want
to start screaming, for some reason.’
‘Oh, father!’ I said wearily. ‘Here,’ I said, then, willing a small