“-And you can’t get married until you’ve established your own business?” Garion suggested.
“Your Majesty will be a very wise king,” Joran said gravely.
“If I can get past all the blunders I’ll make during the first few weeks,” Garion added ruefully.
Later that afternoon he delivered the crystal bird to Aunt Pol in her private apartment.
“What’s this?” she asked, taking the cloth-wrapped object.
“It’s a present for you from a young glassmaker I met down in the city,” Garion replied. “He insisted that I give it to you. His name’s Joran. Be careful. I think it’s kind of fragile.”
Aunt Pol gently unwrapped the crystal piece. Her eyes slowly widened as she stared at the exquisitely wrought bird. “Oh, Garion,” she murmured, “it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s awfully good,” Garion told her. “He works for a glassmaker called Torgan, and Torgan says he’s a genius. He wants to meet you.”
“And I want to meet him,” she breathed, her eyes lost in the glowing detail of the glass figure. Then she carefully set the crystal wren down on a table. Her hands were trembling and her glorious eyes were full of tears.
“What’s wrong, Aunt Pol?” Garion asked her, slightly alarmed.
“Nothing, Garion,” she replied. “Nothing at all.”
“Why are you crying then?”
“You’d never understand, dear,” she told him. Then she put her arms around him and pulled him to her in an almost fierce embrace.
The coronation took place at noon the following day. The Hall of the Rivan King was full to overflowing with nobles and royalty, and the city below was alive with the sound of bells.
Garion could never actually remember very much of his coronation. He did remember that the ermine-bordered cape was hot and that the plain gold crown the Rivan Deacon placed on his head was very heavy. What stood out most in his mind was the way the Orb of Aldur filled the entire Hall with an intense blue light that grew brighter and brighter as he approached the throne and overwhelmed his ears with that strange, exultant song he always seemed to hear whenever he came near it. The song of the Orb was so loud that he scarcely heard the great cheer that greeted him as he turned, robed and crowned, to face the throng in the Hall of the Rivan King.
He did, however, hear one voice very clearly.
“Hail, Belgarion, ” the voice in his mind said quietly to him.
Chapter Thirteen
KING BELGARION SAT somewhat disconsolately on his throne in the Hall of the Rivan King, listening to the endless, droning voice of Valgon, the Tolnedran ambassador. It had not been an easy time for Garion. There were so many things he did not know how to do. For one thing, he was totally incapable of giving orders; for another, he discovered that he had absolutely no time to himself and that he had not the faintest idea of how to dismiss the servants who continually hovered near him. He was followed wherever he went, and he had even given up trying to catch the overzealous bodyguard or valet or messenger who was always in the passageways behind him.
His friends seemed uncomfortable in his presence and they persisted in calling him “your Majesty” no matter how many times he asked them not to. He didn’t feel any different, and his mirror told him that he didn’t look any different, but everyone behaved as if he had changed somehow. The look of relief that passed over their faces each time he left injured him, and he retreated into a kind of protective shell, nursing his loneliness in silence.
Aunt Pol stood continually at his side now, but there was a difference there as well. Before, he had always been an adjunct to her, but now it was the other way around, and that seemed profoundly unnatural.
“The proposal, if your Majesty will forgive my saying so, is most generous,” Valgon observed, concluding his reading of the latest treaty offered by Ran Borune. The Tolnedran ambassador was a sardonic man with an aquiline nose and an aristocratic bearing. He was a Honethite, a member of that family which had founded the Empire and from which the Imperial dynasties had sprung, and he had a scarcely concealed contempt for all Alorns. Valgon was a continual thorn in Garion’s side. Hardly a day passed that some new treaty or trade agreement did not arrive from the Emperor. Garion had quickly perceived that the Tolnedrans were desperately nervous about the fact that they did not have his signature on a single piece of parchment, and they were proceeding on the theory that if they kept shoving documents in front of a man, eventually he would sign something just to get them to leave him alone.
Garion’s counterstrategy was very simple; he refused to sign anything.
“It’s exactly the same as the one they offered last week, ” Aunt Pol’s voice observed in the silence of his mind. “All they did was switch the clauses around and change a few words. Tell him no.”
Garion looked at the smug ambassador with something very close to active dislike. “Totally out of the question,” he replied shortly.
Valgon began to protest, but Garion cut him short. “It’s identical to last week’s proposal, Valgon, and we both know it. The answer was no then, and it’s still no. I will not give Tolnedra preferred status in trade with Riva; I will not agree to ask Ran Borune’s permission before I sign any agreement with any other nation; and I most certainly will not agree to any modification of the terms of the Accords of Vo Mimbre. Please ask Ran Borune not to pester me any more until he’s ready to talk sense.”
“Your Majesty!” Valgon sounded shocked. “One does not speak so to the Emperor of Tolnedra.”
“I’ll speak any way I please,” Garion told him. “You have my – our permission to leave.”
“Your Majesty-”
“You’re dismissed, Valgon,” Garion cut him off.
The ambassador drew himself up, bowed coldly, and stalked from the Hall.
“Not bad,” King Anheg drawled from the partially concealed embrasure where he and the other kings generally gathered. The presence of these royal onlookers made Garion perpetually uneasy. He knew they were watching his every move, judging, evaluating his decisions, his manner, his words. He knew he was bound to make mistakes during these first few months, and he’d have greatly preferred to make them without an audience, but how could he tell a group of sovereign kings that he would prefer not to be the absolute center of their attention?
“A trifle blunt, though, wouldn’t you say?” King Fulrach suggested.
“He’ll learn to be more diplomatic in time,” King Rhodar predicted.
“I expect that Ran Borune will find this directness refreshing just as soon as he recovers from the fit of apoplexy our Belgarion’s reply is going to give him.”
The assembled kings and nobles all laughed at King Rhodar’s sally, and Garion tried without success to keep from blushing.
“Do they have to do that?” he whispered furiously to Aunt Pol. “Every time I so much as hiccup, I get all this commentary.”
“Don’t be surly, dear,” she replied calmly. “It was a trifle impolite, though. Are you really sure you want to take that tone with your future father-in-law?”
That was something of which Garion most definitely did not wish to be reminded. The Princess Ce’Nedra had still not forgiven him for his sudden elevation, and Garion was having grave doubts about the whole notion of marrying her. Much as he liked her – and he did like her – he regretfully concluded that Ce’Nedra would not make him a good wife. She was clever and spoiled, and she had a streak of stubbornness in her nature as wide as an oxcart. Garion was fairly certain that she would take a perverse delight in making his life as miserable as she possibly could. As he sat on his throne listening to the jocular comments of the Alorn Kings, he began to wish that he had never heard of the Orb.
As always, the thought of the jewel made him glance up to where it glowed on the pommel of the massive sword hanging above the throne. There was something so irritatingly smug about the way it glowed each time he sat on the throne. It always seemed to be congratulating itselfas if he, Belgarion of Riva, were somehow its own private creation. Garion did not understand the Orb. There was an awareness about it; he knew that. His mind had tentatively touched that awareness and then had carefully retreated. Garion had been touched on occasion by the minds of Gods, but the consciousness of the Orb was altogether different. There was a power in it he could not even begin to comprehend. More than that, its attachment for him seemed quite irrational. Garion knew himself, and he was painfully aware that he was not that lovable. But each time he came near it, it would begin to glow insufferably, and his mind would fill with that strange, soaring song he had first heard in Ctuchik’s turret. The song of the Orb was a kind of compelling invitation. Garion knew that if he should take it up, its will would join with his, and there would be nothing that between them they could not do. Torak had raised the Orb and had cracked the world with it. Garion knew that if he chose, he could raise the Orb and mend that crack. More alarming was the fact that as soon as the notion occurred to him, the Orb began to provide him with precise instructions on how to go about it.