‘That was Asrana, all right. Anyway, she suggested that I might
spend some of the money on my own house, and this is the one
I chose. Do you like it?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s liveable, I suppose. You were following
Master’s orders, though, Pol. Taking that money was just a bit on
the tacky side.’
‘The Master told me to keep peace in Arendia, father, and that
means getting along with the dukes. I took their money to avoid
offending them. The stipend’s been discontinued, though.’
‘Good. But how are you maintaining this palace?’
‘My estates are quite extensive, Old Wolf. They earn enough tO
get me by.’
‘Your estates?’ That seemed to startle him.
‘They lie to the north of the River Camaar. If you think this house
is opulent, you should see my manor house. I hope you’re not too
disappointed in me, father. I haven’t ascended the throne of a unified
Arendia – yet – but you do have the distinct honor to be addressing
her Grace, the Duchess of Erat.’
‘How did you manage that?’
I told him about the abduction and subsequent rescue of little
Kathandrion and about my elevation to my current rank.
,you didn’t do anything permanent to the Asturian duke, did
you, Pol?’he asked, looking quite concerned. Father’s rather casually
killed a lot of people in his time, but for some reason he’s forbidden
me to follow his example. Consistency’s never been one of his strong
points.
I told him about Nerasin’s stomach problems, and he burst out
laughing. ‘Brilliant, Pol!’ he congratulated me. ‘You ended the
Arendish civil wars with a bellyache!’
‘For the time being, anyway. Go get cleaned up, father. We have
a party to go to this evening.’
‘A party?’
‘A grand ball, actually. Duke Alleran loves music and dancing,
but I rather expect that you’ll be the absolute center of attention.
‘Foolishness!’ he snorted.
‘No, father – politics. I’ve got Arendia in the palm of my hand
right now, but just to be on the safe side, I’d like for everybody to
know that I’ve got you in a sheath strapped to my hip if I really
need you. Be regal, father, and intimidating. Make them believe that
you can uproot mountains if you want to. I want them all to see
just how sharp your edge is and how much damage I can do with
YOU if I decide to whip you out of the sheath and start flailing
around with you.’
‘Are you trying to say that I’m your champion?’ he demanded.
‘You’ll always be my champion, father. Now, go take a bath, trim
Your beard and put on a white robe. Don’t embarrass me in public.’
MY father’s a performer. I think I’ve said that before. Give him a
little bit of stage-direction and a fairly detailed characterization to
work with and he’ll turn in a truly masterful performance. He
grumbled a bit at first – just as he had before that speech he’d given at
Vo Astur – but the lure of sheer melodrama began to exert its pull
on him, and by the time we left for Alleran’s palace, he’d completely
immersed himself in the role of ‘Belgarath the Destroyer’. Candor
Compels me to point out the fact that he overplayed his role
outrageouSlY that evening, but he was performing for Arends, after all.
Arends aren’t the world’s greatest drama critics, so overacting
doesn’t seem to bother them.
Got you again, didn’t I, Old Wolf?
The years plodded sedately along after father’s visit. Little disputes
flared up from time to time, but we were able to smooth them over
during the annual meetings of the Arendish Council. My periodic
excursions as a roving fire-brigade became less and less frequent as
the Arends gradually became accustomed to the idea of peace. My
vassals began to grudgingly admit that they were actually doing
better now than they had back during ‘the good old days’ of
serfdom, and money began to replace the barter economy which had
previously prevailed. I had a few difficulties with Tolnedran
merchants in some of the towns in my realm, but they largely evaporated
after I standardized weights and measures and amended the
criminal code to include fairly stiff fines for unrestrained creativity in the
definition of pounds and inches. At first the local Tolnedrans didn’t
think I was serious, so for a few years my revenue from the fines
actually exceeded that which my estates brought in. The money was
surplus anyway, so I put it to use building schools from one end
of my duchy to the other. I didn’t quite manage universal literacy,
but I was moving up on it. Then, in furtherance of a long-standing
hobby of mine, I established a college of practical medicine in
Sulturn. My goal was a healthy, prosperous, well-educated population,
and I was purposefully marching in that direction, dragging
everybody in my realm behind me.
Duke Borrolane, the successor to old Duke Corrolin, seemed a
little puzzled by what I was doing and by my obvious success
during our meeting in the summer of 2340.
‘It’s really nothing, your Grace,’ I told him. ‘Odd though it may
seem to you, women are far more practical than men – perhaps
because we’re the ones who do the cooking. Men are dreamers, but
no matter how exalted a dream is, it won’t bake a loaf of bread.
When you get right down to it, anyone who can run a kitchen can
probably rule a domain – large or small.’
The actual business of the day-to-day ruling of the Duchy of Erat
fell largely on Killane’s shoulders. He was in his mid-fifties by now
and he was a substantial-looking fellow with a no-nonsense air
about him. Technically, he was my reeve, the administrator of mY
personal estates, but my vassals, assorted counts and barons, soon
realized that his opinions carried great weight with me, and so they
all tried to stay on the good side of him. He didn’t abuse his position
or put on airs that might have offended the nobility. His standard
response to petitions, complaints, disputes, and the like was fairly
simple: ‘I’ll be after sendin’ word of yer proposal t’ her Grace, me
Lord. We’ll see what she has t’ say.’ Then he’d wait for a couple of
weeks and deliver my ‘decision’ about matters I wasn’t even aware
of. His function in my realm was much the same as Kamion’s had
been on the Isle of the Winds. He served as a buffer – a filter, if you
will – that kept petty details out of my hair. In effect, I gave him a
general idea of what I wanted, and then he made sure that I got it
without offending too many people. In many ways, though he
probably didn’t realize it, my humorous friend was an administrative
genius. To put it succinctly, he ran Erat while I ran the rest of
Arendia.
BY 2350, however, age was beginning to creep up on him. His
hair was a kind of sandy grey now, and his hearing was failing him.
He took to using a staff to aid his faltering steps and an ear-trumpet
to hear with. Increasingly, my visits to my lakeside estate became
medical house-calls. I restricted his diet to some degree and stirred
up compounds of some fairly exotic herbs to control an increasing
number of infirmities. ‘You’re falling apart, Killane,’ I shouted into
his ear-trumpet on one such visit in the autumn of 2352. ‘Why didn’t
you take better care of yourself?’
‘Who’d a thought I was gonna live s’ long, Lady-O?’ he said with
a rueful expression. ‘Nobody in me family’s ever lived past fifty,
an’ here I am at sixty-eight. I should o’ bin in me grave twenty years
ago, don’t Y’ know.’ Then he squinted at the ceiling. ‘When y’ git
right down t’ it, though, in th’ rest o’ me family, gettin’ killed in a
tavern brawl is what y’ might call dyin’ of natural causes, but I ain’t
been in a good brawl since th’ day I first laid eyes on yer Grace.
Y’ve gone an’ spoilt me entire life, Lady Polgara. Aren’t y’ after
bein’ ashamed o’ yerself?’
‘Not very much, Killane,’ I told him. ‘I think you’d better start
dropping some of your duties in the laps of whichever of your
relatives seems competent. You’re not getting enough rest, and
You’re spending too much time worrying about petty little things.
Let somebody else take care of the little ones. You save yourself for
the big ones.,
‘I ain’t dead yet, Lady-O,’ he insisted. ‘I kin still carry me own
end.’
And he did – for another two years. Then a number of things
which had been creeping up on him pounced all at once, and I
hovered over his sick-bed for several months. I sent word to Alleran
asking him to make my apologies to the other dukes that summer.