fascinated her, and she had plenty of contacts back home to assist
her.
It was several months before word of Asrana’s activities reached
me in
Vo Wacune, and as soon as I heard of them, I sent Killane
Out to shop around town for a large mirror -‘the largest you can
find’. I wasn’t really all that curious about my own reflection. I knew
what I looked like, after all. Killane’s shopping expedition was a
ruse designed to get him out of the house long enough for me to
slip away from him. I did not want an escort this time. I gave him
a quarter of an hour to immerse himself in the cabinet shops in
the commercial district of Vo Wacune, and then I retired to my
rose-garden, stepped out of sight behind a hedge, and went falcon.
I wanted to reach Vo Mandor before Asrana could come up with
any more mischief.
Evening was settling on the battlements of Mandorin’s castle
when I arrived, winging my way out of the northeast. I settled on
the parapet, sent out a quick, searching thought to locate Asrana,
and then changed back. I was irritated, but not really in that state
melodramatically called ‘high dudgeon’. I suppose that ‘medium
dudgeon’ would have been more apt. Fortunately, Asrana was
alone, dreamily brushing her hair, when I burst in on her.
‘Polly!’ she exclaimed, dropping her hair brush. ‘You startled me.’
‘I’m going to do worse than that in a minute, Asrana. What on
earth do you think you’re doing in Asturia?’
Her eyes hardened. ‘I’m keeping Nerasin off balance, that’s all.
Believe me, Polly, I know exactly what I’m doing. Right now, Nerasin’s
afraid to turn his back on anybody in his court, and I have it
on the best authority that he never sleeps in the same bed for two
nights in a row. I’ve spun imaginary plots in his palace like cobwebs.
He’s afraid to close his eyes.’
‘I want you to stop it at once.’
‘No, Polly,’ she replied coolly. ‘I don’t think so. I’m Asturian
myself, and I know the Asturian mind far better than you do.
Nerasin’s only interested in his own precious skin, so he’ll ignore the
alliance between Wacune and Mimbre if he thinks a war will cement
his grip on power. He won’t care a jot if that war kills half the men
in Asturia. All I’m doing is keeping him so busy protecting his own
life that he doesn’t have time to start that war.’
‘Asrana, he’ll eventually realize that all these imaginary plots are
just a ruse, and then he’ll ignore them.’
‘I certainly hope so,’ she said, ‘because that’s when the plots will
stop being imaginary. I am going to kill him, Polly. Look upon it as
my gift to you.’
‘To me?’ That startled me.
‘Of course. You’re the one who shoved peace down all our throats,
aren’t you? As long as Nerasin’s in power in Vo Astur, this peace
of yours is in danger. I’m going to see to it that he doesn’t stay in
power for much longer. Once he’s gone, we’ll all be able to breathe
much more easily.’
‘Whoever replaces him will probably be just as bad, Asrana.’
i had regressed to ‘low dudgeon’ by now.
‘Well, if he is, the same thing that’s going to happen to Nerasin
will happen to him. I’ll sift my way through the whole body of
Asturian nobility until I find somebody we can live with, and if I
can’t find a reasonable noble, I’ll promote a townsman – or even a
serf, if I have to.’
,you’re very serious about this, aren’t you, Asrana?’ When I’d
first heard about her games, I’d thought she was just playing.
‘Dead serious, Polly.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Before you came to Vo
Astur, I was just a silly little ornament in Oldoran’s court. You
changed all that. You should always be careful when you start
throwing words like “patriotism” around in the presence of Arends.
you know. We tend to take things too seriously. These past few
years of peace have been better for Arendia than anything that’S
happened to us for the last six or eight centuries. People here are
actually dying of old age now. I’ll depopulate Asturia if that’s what
it takes to keep what’s coming to be known as “Polgara’s Peace”
from disintegrating.’
‘Polgara’s Peace?’ That really startled me.
‘Well, it certainly wasn’t any of our doing. It’s all your fault, Polly.
If you hadn’t waved peace in front of our faces, none of us would
have known what it looks like.’
When I calmed down and looked at things from her perspective,
I could see that she had a point, and, moreover, that her extensive
contacts in Vo Astur made her the best qualified of all of us to keep
Nerasin so thoroughly off balance that he’d never have time to cause
trouble in the rest of Arendia. I chided her for not keeping me
advised, extracted a promise from her that she wouldn’t do anything
major without consulting me first, and then I went back to Vo
Wacune, coming down inside the grounds of the palace instead of
my own rose-garden. I spoke with Kathandrion at some length about
Asrana’s activities and asked him to keep Corrolin advised. Then I
went on home to give Killane the chance to scold me.
It was in the autumn of 2326 that I helped Alleran’s wife,
Mayaserell, through a difficult labor and finally delivered her of a son,
who was named after his grandfather – a fairly common practice.
Kathandrion was so proud of it, though, that he nearly exploded.
The borders of Asturia, both to the east and to the south, remained
sealed – which is to say that no one could conveniently march an
army across the lines, but nobody can totally seal a border that runs
through a thick forest. Asrana’s messengers and fellow-plotters had
little trouble crossing that line, and I’m sure that Nerasin’s people
could also slip across. Vo Astur continued to bubble like a teapot
that’s been left over the fire too long.
It was on a blustery day in the early spring of 2327 that something
happened which I have very good reason to remember. There’d
been a certain parity of heavy weaponry among the three Arendish
duchies, which is to say that the siege engines of an attacking force
couldn’t throw boulders, burning pitch, or baskets full of javelins
any farther than the engines of a defending force could. The
defenders of a city or fort had walls to hide behind, however, while
the attackers did not, and this put the attacking force at a definite
disadvantage. Large amounts of money and a great deal of
engineering talent were devoted to the improvement of those engines of
war, since the extension of the range of a catapult by a mere fifty
paces could determine the outcome of a battle.
Kathandrion’s engineers had designed a very large catapult that
was based on some highly questionable theories involving pulleys,
counterweights, and reciprocal tensions. Frankly, that monstrosity
looked like the frame of a large house enveloped in cobwebs to
me. Kathandrion was very enthusiastic about it, however, and he
hovered over the shop where it was being constructed like a mother
hen, and he spent his evenings deeply immersed in the engineers’
drawings. I glanced at them a few times myself, And it seemed that
there was something wrong with the concept, though I couldn’t
quite put my finger on it.
In time, the monstrosity was completed, and the engineers rolled
it out into a nearby meadow to find out if it could really work.
Kathandrion himself pulled off his doublet to lend a hand – or in
this case, a shoulder – to the task of moving the huge thing into
position. Then he bent his back to the cranking of one of the many
windlasses that tightened the tangle of ropes to bowstring tautness.
The entire court gathered some distance off to one side to watch
the Duke of Wacune pull the lanyard that was designed to release
all that pent-up force.
I was there as well, and just as all was in readiness, I had a sudden
premonition. There was something wrong! ‘Kathandrion!’ I shouted.
‘No!’
But it was too late. The boyishly grinning Duke Kathandrion
jerked the lanyard.
And the entire framework exploded into a jumbled mass of
snarled rope and splintered timbers! The computations of the
engineers had been perfect. Unfortunately, they had not computed
the strength of the wooden timbers that formed the frame. The
sudden release of all that pent-up energy shattered those heavy
beams, spraying the crew surrounding the engine with yard-long
splinters that spun out faster than any arrow shot from a bow.
Duke Kathandrion of Wacune, my dear, dear friend, died instantly
when a sharp-pointed chunk of wood thicker than his arm drove
completely through his head.