sire dislike him so much?
got you that time, didn’t I, Old Wolf?
I
Then King Cherek and his sons, Dras Bull-neck and Algar Fleet-foot,
arrived for the wedding, and things began to get just a bit more
serious. Despite the way Beldaran and Riva felt about each other,
mY sister had been right. Theirs was an arranged marriage. The
Possibility that my father might also decide to arrange one for me
– just to protect me from all those fawning suitors – raised its ugly
head. There was in those days – probably even still existing – the
idea that women are intellectually inferior to men. Men did – and
many still do – automatically assume that women are empty-headed
ninnies who’ll fall prey to the first glib young man who comes along
with certain ideas in his mind. The result, of course, is the virtual
imprisonment of almost all women of a certain rank. What my father
and all those other primitives can’t seem to realize is that we’ll
resent that imprisonment and go to almost any lengths to circumvent
it. That might help to explain why so many girls become involved
with inappropriate young men. In most cases the character of the
young man doesn’t make a jot of difference. The girl in question is
driven by a desire to show them that she can do it, rather than by
empty-headed lust.
That’s frequently the reason for so many arranged marriages. The
father marries his daughter off as soon as possible to ‘protect’ her.
After she marries, any dalliances she chooses to take up to amuse
herself are her husband’s problem.
The possibility that father might choose to shackle me to either
Dras or Algar made me distinctly uneasy for a while.
*CHAPTER5
For some reason, mother had always been a bit vague about fathers
now-famous trip to Mallorea, and I felt that I might need
information in order to counter any absurd notions that could
be popping into his head. I went looking for uncle Beldin.
I found him high in one of the towers of the citadel.
nursing a tankard of beer and looking out at the sullen black
surging under a threatening sky. I broached the subject di
‘How much can you tell me about father’s expedition to Malloria?’
I demanded.
‘Not much,’ he replied. ‘I wasn’t in the Vale when Cherek and
the boys came to fetch him.’
‘You do know what happened, though, don’t you?’
‘The twins told me,’ he said, shrugging. ‘As I understand it,
Cherek and the boys came slogging through the snow in the middle
of winter with some kind of half-wit notion that the priests of Belar
had dredged up out of what the Alorns call “the auguries”.
sometimes Chereks can be awfully gullible.’
‘What are auguries?’ I asked him.
‘Supposedly a way to foretell the future. The priests of Belar
get roaring drunk, and then they gut a sheep and fondle his entrails.
The Alorns have a quaint belief that sheep-guts can tell you What’s
going to happen next week. I’d rather strongly suspect that t
plays a large part in the ceremony. Alorns are enthusiastic ab
I don’t imagine the sheep care much for the idea, though.’
‘Who could possibly be gullible enough to believe something so
absurd?’
‘Your incipient brother-in-law, for one.’
‘Oh dear. Poor beldaran.’
‘Why this sudden interest in quaint Alorn customs, Pol?’he asked.
‘It occurred to me that father might want to get me out of his hair
by marrying me off to Algar or Dras, and I don’t think I’m ready
for marriage just yet. I want to come up with some arguments to
nip that in the bud.’
He laughed. ‘Not to worry, Pol,’ he told me. ‘Belgarath’s a little
strange sometimes, but he’s not that strange. Besides, the Master
wouldn’t let him get away with it. I’m fairly sure he has other plans
for you.’
As it turned out, that proved to be a gross understatement.
Although I was fairly certain that there was no Alorn husband in
my immediate future, Dras and Algar hadn’t heard the news as yet,
so a pair of Alorn kings joined my crowd of suitors.
Dras was the more aggressive of the two, since he was the eldest.
I found his attentions something of a relief. He was direct and
honest, unlike the adolescent Rivans with their clumsily contrived
conversational ploys. Dras already knew who he was, so he wasn’t
inventing it as he went along. ‘Well,’ he said to me a couple of days
after he, his father, and his brother had arrived, ‘what do you think?
Should I ask my father to speak with yours?’
‘About what, your Majesty?’ I feigned innocence.
‘Our wedding, of course. You and I could get married at the same
time your sister and Riva do.’
His approach didn’t leave me much maneuvering room. ‘Isn’t this
all coming just a little fast, Dras?’
‘Why waste time, Polgara? The marriage would be advantageous
to both of us. You get to be a queen and I get a wife. Then we can
both get all this courting nonsense over with.’
That didn’t go down too well. I rather resented his off-hand
dismissal of my entertainment. I was having fun, and he was trying
to take all the adventure out of it. ‘Let me think it over, Dras,’ I
suggested.
‘Of course,’ he said generously. ‘Take all the time you want, Pol.
How about this afternoon?’
Can you believe that I didn’t even laugh in his face?
Algar’s courtship was very trying for me. The niceties of the
courtship ritual require the female to respond to the overtures of the
male. I’ve seen this again and again among my birds. It’s always
the male bird who has the bright plumage. He’s supposed to strut
and shake his colorful feathers while the female admires him.
Humans are much the same. The male shows off, and the female
responds – but how can you possibly respond to someone who can
go for days on end without saying a word? Algar was very
intelligent, but he talked almost as much as a rock does. To be honest
about it, I found his silence rather intriguing – and irritating at the
same time. ‘Don’t you ever talk about the weather, Algar?’ I asked
him once in a fit of exasperation.
‘What for?’ he replied. He pointed at a window. ‘It’s right out
there. Go look for yourself.’
You see what I mean about Algar?
I was of two minds about the double-pronged courtship of this pair
of kings. They were huge men, both in terms of their physical size
and their exalted rank. Their very presence kept my other suitors
away. On the one hand, I resented that. I’d been having fun, and
then they’d come along and spoiled it. On the other hand, though,
their presence spared me hours of listening to the babble of assorted
young men whose brains had been shut down by the various exotic
substances coursing through their veins.
Cold logic – and mother’s continued presence in my mind
advised me that this sojourn on the Isle of the Winds was a period
of training preparing me for things to come. The fact that I was the
daughter of ‘Belgarath the Sorcerer’ assured me that I’d be spending
periods of my life at various royal courts. I’d need to know all the
tricks those periods would inevitably involve. The inane,
selfaggrandizing babble of my adolescent admirers taught me how to
endure ‘small talk’ – nobody can talk smaller than an adolescent male
on the prowl. Dras and Algar, their minds filled with the burdens
of state, taught me about the serious matters that are going on while
all those young butterflies are busy admiring themselves.
It was uncle Beldin who pointed out the obvious to my father,
and then father had a word with King Cherek Bear-shoulders,
advising him that I was not a candidate for the queenly throne of either
Drasnia nor Algaria. That took some of the fun out of my little game,
but I still had all those strutting young peacocks around to entertain
me.
Then one morning as I was passing down the corridor toward
the hall where I customarily held court, mother spoke firmly to me.
‘Haven’t you had about enough of this, Pol?’
‘ I ‘ m just passing the time, mother,’ I told her.
‘Don’t waste the effort of trying to come up with lame excuses, Pol.
You’ve managed to put aside your fascination with being dirty. Now it’s
time to leave this other game behind as well.’
‘Spoilsport.’
‘That will do, Polgara.’
I sighed. ‘Oh, all right.’ I wasn’t really very gracious about it.
I decided that I needed one last triumph, though. I’d been playing
the empty-headed charmer – little more than a thing in the eyes of
my suitors. As mother had pointed out earlier, thinghood’s rather
degrading. Since I was going to leave all that behind, I thought it