the rest been easy. The local chapter of the Bear-Cult was clearly
specious, but the members weren’t intelligent enough to recognize
rampant revisionism when they saw it. Celane received the
recognition – and adulation – he so yearned for, and Chamdar got his
hands on a Rivan King.
We absolutely had to sever that connection. I knew of a way to
do that, and it was far less drastic than father’s notion of erasing
Celane’s mind would have been. There were dangers involved in
making Chamdar’s rambling thoughts audible. If he were to become
aware of what I was doing, he quite probably would have killed
Celane on the spot – or at least tried to. To prevent that, I had to
overlay his awareness with a kind of reflective reverie. His mind
had to wander sufficiently to dull his alertness. It wasn’t easy, which
is why I chose to do it myself rather than just hand it over to
father. My father tends in the direction of blunt force when he does
something. Subtlety’s never been one of his strong points.
Aside from the more obvious physical differences, that may be the
one thing that most distinguishes men from women. We think
differently, and so we do things differently. Many people – men mostly
– get very upset by these differences, but can you imagine how
boring life would be if we all thought and acted in exactly the same
way? Actually, gentlemen, it’s much more fun this way.
Anyway, Celane was making a fairly windy speech about how
important he was when Chamdar’s now-audible ruminations
brought my boastful nephew up short. The announcement, ‘Ctuchik
will reward me if I kill this dolt’, definitely got Celane’s attention
– as well as the attention of the other Cultists. Father advised me
later that two of the shaggily-dressed fanatics were very upset by
what Chamdar revealed. Evidently Chamdar had prudently decided
to bring a pair of bodyguards along.
The rambling of Ctuchik’s less than loyal underling went on and
on – long enough at any rate for Celane to regain his senses and
realize just how much his swollen ego had been used to dupe him.
When Chamdar’s day-dream reached its culmination and in his
mind’s eye he was being exalted to first disciplehood, Gelane gave
him a quick demonstration of unrestrained Alornishness by punching
him square in the face.
Chamdar reeled and fell, and his now-scrambled wits lost all
control of his puppet, my nephew. With the evaporation of
Chamdar’s hold on him, the full force of Gelane’s own foolishness struck
him very nearly as hard as he’d just struck Chamdar. That wasn’t
a good time for extended soul-searching, since Chamdar’s pair of
disguised bodyguards whipped out some very ugly knives to rush
to their employer’s defense. Fortunately, the other Cultists took the
defense of Gelane to be a religious obligation, and their piety along
those lines was commendable, to say the very least.
After Chamdar had fled and his bodyguards had been swarmed
under, Celane got hold of himself. ‘We’ve been tricked!’ he
exclaimed. ‘That was no priest of Belar!’
‘What shall we do, Godslayer?’ one hulking Alorn demanded.
‘Should we chase him down and kill him?’
‘Don’t ever call me that again!’ Gelane commanded. ‘I’m not the
Godslayer! I’ve dishonored my name!’ He ripped off his bear-skin
and violently hurled it into the fire. ‘The Bear-Cult is a lie and a
deception!’
‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ the first Alorn declared, but
I’m going to go find that priest and rip him up the middle!’ And
they all dashed out to flounder around in the bushes.
‘That was very slick, Pol,’ father complimented me after he’d
discarded his feathers. ‘Where did you learn how to do that?’
‘In Vo Wacune,’ I replied. ‘I had to force a confession out of an
Asturian spy, and I didn’t much care for the conventional ways to
do that. It’s fairly simple, actually. Someday when we’ve got some
time, I’ll show you how to do it.’ I cocked my head to listen to
the Alorns crashing through the brush. ‘Let’s wait until Celane’s
playmates go home before we collar him and drag him back to the
barrel-works. I don’t know that we need to let the other Cultists
know that we’ve been around.’
‘Truly,’ he agreed.
The heretic Cult members floundered around in the undergrowth
for quite some time, but by then Chamdar was probably half-way to Camaar. ‘What do we do now, your Majesty?’ one of them asked
Gelane as they trooped back to the fire.
‘Let’s just forget about that “your Majesty” business,’ Gelane told
him. ‘That was nothing but a Grolim trick. I think we should all
swear to keep this whole thing secret. Our neighbors are Sendars,
SO we’ll look like idiots if we start talking about the Bear-Cult as if
it really meant something.’
They all agreed readily. Nobody really likes to look foolish. They
Swore on their mother’s graves, their swords-though they didn’t
actually have swords – and their somewhat questionable honor that
no word of their temporary amusement would ever pass their lips.
Then Celane sent them all home.
When he was alone, Celane started to weep, and that’s when
father and I came out of the woods.
‘Not too smooth there, was it, Celane?’ father said dryly. ‘It’s
very noble to believe that everybody always speaks the truth, but
didn’t it occur to you that it might be just a trifle on the gullible
side?’
Gelane didn’t seem surprised to see us. In spite of his display of
poor judgement, he was still a fairly clever young man. ‘Who really
was that fellow who called himself a priest, grandfather?’
‘His name’s Chamdar, and you’ve already guessed that he’s a
Grolim. Was your head turned off, Gelane? Couldn’t you tell by the
color of his skin and the shape of his eyes that he’s an Angarak?’
‘That wouldn’t make any difference here, father,’ I explained.
‘This is Sendaria, and I spent several centuries erasing any outward
awareness of racial differences.’
‘Brotherhood’s a very nice thing, Pol,’ he said, ‘but if somebody
who happens to be green is out to kill you, color blindness isn’t
really a very useful trait. Let’s go back to town. We’ve got packing
to do.’
‘Where are we going, grandfather?’ Celane asked him.
‘I haven’t decided yet. We do have to get out of Sendaria, though.’
My heart sank. I knew what that meant.
‘Why don’t you buy yourself some new clothes, father?’ I asked
him as we entered the city.
‘These are new, Pol.’
‘Oh? Which garbage heap did you find them on?’
‘Look a little closer, Pol,’ he replied. ‘I paid a Tol Honeth tailor a
lot of money for these. The patches and frayed cuffs are just for show.
The clothes are very well-made and they’ll last me for centuries.’
‘Couldn’t you afford shoes that matched?’
‘I didn’t want them to match. I want to look like an out-at-the-heels
vagabond.’
‘I think you’ve succeeded far beyond your wildest dreams. it’s a
costume, then?’
‘Of course it is. People don’t pay much attention to wandering
tramps. When I wear these, I can go through a town or village andnobody’lll remember that I’ve been there after a day or two.y
‘Don’t you ever come off stage?’
‘I’m more interesting this way.’ He tossed that off with his usual
flamboyance. ‘My real character’s rather boring. I could be a duke
if you’d prefer, your Grace.’
‘Spare me.’
‘Why did you call her that, grandfather?’ Gelane asked. “‘Your
Grace,” I mean?’
‘Secrets again, Pol?’father sighed. ‘You and your secrets.’ Then
he looked appraisingly at Gelane, obviously remembering the young
man’s self-adulatory speech at the bonfire. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said
with orotund formality, ‘may I present her Grace, the Duchess of
Erat?’
Celane blinked and then stared at me. ‘You’re not” he exclaimed.
‘Well, I was, dear. That was a long time ago, though.’
‘You’re the most famous person in Sendarian history!’
‘It’s nice to be noticed.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? My manners were terrible, Aunt Pol.
You should have told me.’
‘So you could bow and scrape to me in public? You’ve got a long
way to go, Gelane. We don’t want to be special, remember? That’s
why you’re a cooper instead of a magistrate or a country squire.’ I
saw an opening there, so I jumped on it. ‘There are two sides to
nobility, Celane. Most people only see the fine houses, the fancy
clothes, and all the bowing and scraping by lesser nobles. The other
side’s more important, though, and much simpler. Duty, Gelane,
duty. Keep that in front of your eyes every waking moment. You
are – or could be – the Rivan King. That’d involve some very
complicated duties, but the way things stand right now, your only duty is
to the line of succession. You perform that duty by staying alive,
and there are a large number of people in the world who want to