brooding morosely. Then he sighed. ‘I am troubled, Zedar,’ he confessed.
‘A great discrepancy looms before me.’
‘Reveal it, Master,’ Zedar urged. ‘Mayhap between us we might
resolve it.’
‘Thine o’erweening self-confidence doth amuse me Zedar,’Torak
responded. ‘Hast thou perused the document which doth expound
the ravings of that sub-human on the banks of the Mrin in far
northern Drasnia?’
‘At some length, Master.’
‘And art thou also familiar with the truth which was revealed to
me at Ashaba?’
‘Yea, Master.’
‘Didst thou not perceive that the two do not precisely coincide?
Both spake of the battle which shall begin here before Vo Mimbre
a few hours hence.’
‘Yes, I did so understand.’
‘But the account from Mrin doth not agree with that from Ashaba.
Mrin doth hang the fate of the world on the third day of the
forthcoming battle.’
‘I did perceive as much, Master.’
‘Ashaba, however, doth not. Ashaba’s concentration doth lie upon
the second day, or upon the fourth.’
‘I had not fully recognized that, Master,’ Zedar confessed. What
thinkest thou might be the import of this discrepancy?’
‘The import, methinks, doth rest upon him who shall confront
me at the battle’s height. Should the Godslayer and I meet on the
second day – or upon the fourth, I shall easily overthrow him.
Should we meet upon that fatal third day, then shall the spirit Of
the Purpose infuse him, and I shall surely perish.’ He suddenly
broke off, muttering incoherently, his voice distorted by the hollow
echoes inside his steel mask. ‘Accursed rain!’ he burst out suddenly,
‘and accursed be the rivers which have delayed mine advance. We
have come hither too late, Zedar! Had we arrived but two days
one day – earlier, the world would have been mine. Now is the
outcome cast into the lap of chance, and I am unquiet about this,
for chance hath never been my friend. I left Ashaba in the sure and
certain knowledge that I should arrive here at the proper time, and
gladly have I sacrificed Angarak lives uncounted to achieve that
goal, and still have I reached this place but one single day too late.
Will I or nil I, I must face the Overlord of the West on that fatal
third day, should fickle chance so decree. I am mightily discontented,
Zedar, discontented beyond measure!’
‘He thinks it’s Celane!’ I gasped inside our enclosed awareness.
‘What?’ Mother’s thought was as stunned as mine.
‘He actually believes that it’s Gelane who’s going to challenge him!’
‘How did you arrive at that?’
‘The terms “Godslayer” and “Overlord of the West” refer to the Rivan
King. Somehow, Torak thinks that Celane’s returned to Riva and taken
up the sword. He doesn’t even know that Brand’s the one who’s going to
challenge him.’
Mother considered that. ‘You could be right, Pol,’ she agreed.
‘Torak’s information comes from Ctuchik and Ctuchik relies on Chamdar.
Your-father’s been distracting Chamdar-for several centuries with all those
clever games in Sendaria. Torak doesn’t really know anything at all about
the heir to the throne of Riva. He could very well believe that it’s the heir
he’ll be-facing on that third day.’
‘I’m sure of it, mother. That would explain why you were told to
take the Orb off the pommel of Iron-grip’s sword and put it in the shield
instead. Brand’s weapon isn’t going to be a sword; it’s going to be that
shield.’
Torak was still talking, so mother and I set our private discussion
aside to listen.
‘Thou must take the city on the morrow, Zedar,’ Torak instructed.
‘My meeting with the descendant of Iron-grip must take place on
the following day. Sacrifice the whole of Angarak if need be, but
VO Mimbre must be mine ere the sun doth seek his bed.’
‘It shall be as my Master commands,’ Zedar promised. ‘E’en now
are mine engines of war being moved into place. I pledge to thee,
Lord, that Vo Mimbre will fall on this day, for I shall hurl all of
Angarak ‘gainst those golden walls.’ Clearly, Zedar’s eight-year
Siege of the Algarian Stronghold hadn’t taught him the folly of
making rash promises.
Then Torak launched himself into a rambling monologue that
didn’t really make too much sense. History hadn’t treated Torak
“very well, and his resentment towered like a mountain. So many
things he’d believed should be his had been denied him that his
sanity had slipped away. Under different circumstances, I might
have pitied him.
‘I think we’ve heard enough, Pol,’ mother said at that point. ‘We’re
not accomplishing anything by sitting here listening while he-feels sorry
for himself.’
‘Whatever you say. mother,’ I agreed.
Our owl squeezed its way back out through the embrasure and
,flew on silent wings back toward Vo Mimbre. The weather had
cleared after that blizzard down in Ashaba, and the stars were out.
I’d missed the stars. People with abnormally long life spans always
seem to grow fond of the stars. There’s a sense of permanence about
them that’s comforting when all else around us is falling away.
Although Torak hadn’t done it entirely by himself, he had cracked
the world apart back during the War of the Gods, so I’m sure he
could have dismantled the walls of Vo Mimbre with a single
thought. Clearly, however, he was not permitted to do that. The
exquisitely convoluted rules of the eternal game between the two
contending Destinies forbade the exercise of Divine Will during
these EVENTS. The consequences of breaking those rules were quite
severe – as Ctuchik was to discover at Rak Cthol. Torak could act
only through human agency – right up until the moment when he
faced Brand, and even that EVENT would be tightly controlled by
rules.
‘The rest of us are under similar constraints, Pol,’ mother’s voice
replied to my unspoken thought. ‘Warn your-father. Tell him that this
isn’t a good time for experiments. Suggest that dropping a comet on the
Angaraks at this point wouldn’t be a good idea.’
‘He wouldn’t do that, mother.’
‘Oh, really? You’ve never seen the kinds of silly things he does when
he gets irritated, Pol. I saw him throw a hammer away after he’d smashed
his thumb with it once.’
‘Everybody does that once in a while, mother.’
‘He threw it at the sky, Polgara. That was several thousand years ago,
and as far as I know, it’s still going – at least I hope it is. Sometimes It
only takes a very small thing to explode a star in the wrong place at the
wrong time. That happened once already. We don’t want it to happen
again, do we?’
‘Not really,’ I agreed. ‘We’ve got enough to worry about as it is. Are
we really sure that nobody’s going to be able to use the Will and the Word
during this battle?
‘I don’t think we can say for sure. Watch Zedar very closely. if he Can
get away with doing something without dissolving on the spot, we should
be able to do similar things. Let Zedar take the risks.’
‘I knew that he’d eventually.be useful for something, mother. I’m not
sure that taking all the risks will warm his heart very much, though.’
‘What a shame.’
We settled onto the battlements of Aldorigen’s palace shortly after
midnight. ‘Run along, Pol,’ mother suggested. ‘I’ll go back out and
keep an eye on things while you report to your father.’
‘Run along’? Sometimes mother’s use of language can be very
deflating. That ‘run along’ had the strong odor of ‘go out and play’.
I detached myself from our owl and resumed my own form even
as mother swooped away.
my report to father and the twins was far from complete. I made
no mention of Torak’s mistaken conclusion that his opponent in the
forthcoming duel was going to be Gelane. Father tends to make
things up as he goes along, and that made me very nervous. Celane
was safe at the Stronghold, and I wanted him to stay safe. My father’s
a very gifted performer, but it’s not a good idea to just push him
out onto the stage and let him improvise. Overacting is second
nature to him, and the notion of bringing Celane to Vo Mimbre to
display him atop the battlements for Torak’s entertainment at the
height of the battle might have been dramatic, but it would also put
my youthful charge in great danger. As long as father didn’t know
what Torak believed, he’d have no reason to start getting creative. I
learned a long time ago not to tell father any more than he absolutely
needed to know.
I did, however, tell him that Torak hadn’t once left his rusty tin
bucket of a palace since he’d crossed the land bridge. Father
probably didn’t need to know that, but the fact that Torak was staying
in isolation might help to stem his inventiveness.
‘You might want to keep something in mind for future reference,
father,’ I added. ‘Torak’s disciples aren’t at all like us. We’re a family,