“It’s my time, dear,” she reminded him. She looked up from her sewing, her eyes unreadable. Then, without explanation she held up the tunic with one hand and ran the forefinger of her other hand carefully up the rip. Garion felt a very light surge, and the sound was only a whisper. The rip mended itself before his eyes, rewoven as if it had never existed. “Now you can see how completely useless mending it really is,” she told him.
“Why do you do it then?”
“Because I like to sew, dear,” she replied. With a sharp little jerk she ripped the tunic again. Then she picked up her needle and patiently began repairing the rip. “Sewing keeps the hands and eyes busy, but leaves the mind free for other things. It’s very relaxing.”
“Sometimes you’re awfully complicated, Aunt Pol.”
“Yes, dear. I know.”
Garion paced about for a bit, then suddenly knelt beside her chair and, pushing her sewing aside, he put his head into her lap. “Oh, Aunt Pol,” he said, very close to tears.
“What’s the matter, dear?” she asked, carefully smoothing his hair.
“I’m so lonely.”
“Is that all?”
He lifted his head and stared at her incredulously. He had not expected that.
“Everyone is lonely, dear,” she explained, drawing him close to her. “We touch other people only briefly, then we’re alone again. You’ll get used to it in time.”
“Nobody will talk to me now – not the way they did before. They’re always bowing and saying ‘Your Majesty’ to me.”
“You are the king, after all,” she replied.
“But I don’t want to be.”
“That’s too bad. It’s the destiny of your family, so there’s not a thing you can do about it. Did anyone ever tell you about Prince Gared?”
“I don’t think so. Who was he?”
“He was the only survivor when the Nyissan assassins killed King Gorek and his family. He escaped by throwing himself into the sea.”
“How old was he?”
“Six. He was a very brave child. Everyone thought that he had drowned and that his body had been washed out to sea. Your grandfather and I encouraged that belief. For thirteen hundred years we’ve hidden Prince Gared’s descendants. For generations they’ve lived out their lives in quiet obscurity for the single purpose of bringing you to the throne – and now you say that you don’t want to be king?”
“I don’t know any of those people,” he said sullenly. He knew he was behaving badly, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.
“Would it help if you did know them – some of them, anyway?”
The question baffled him.
“Perhaps it might,” she decided. She laid her sewing aside and stood up, drawing him to his feet. “Come with me,” she told him and led him to the tall window that looked out over the city below. There was a small balcony outside; in one corner where a rain-gutter had cracked, there had built up during the fall and winter a sheet of shiny black ice, curving down over the railing and spreading out on the balcony floor.
Aunt Pol unlatched the window and it swung open, admitting a blast of icy air that made the candles dance. “Look directly into the ice, Garion,” she told him, pointing at the glittering blackness. “Look deep into it.”
He did as she told him and felt the force of her mind at work. Something was in the ice – shapeless at first but emerging slowly and becoming more and more visible. It was, he saw finally, the figure of a pale blond woman, quite lovely and with a warm smile on her lips. She seemed young, and her eyes were directly on Garion’s face. “My baby,” a voice seemed to whisper to him. “My little Garion.”
Garion began to tremble violently. “Mother?” he gasped.
“So tall now,” the whisper continued. “Almost a man.”
“And already a king, Ildera,” Aunt Pol told the phantom in a gentle voice.
“Then he was the chosen one,” the ghost of Garion’s mother exulted. “I knew it. I could feel it when I carried him under my heart.”
A second shape had begun to appear beside the first. It was a tall young man with dark hair but a strangely familiar face. Garion clearly saw its resemblance to his own. “Hail Belgarion, my son,” the second shape said to him.
“Father,” Garion replied, not knowing what else to say.
“Our blessings, Garion,” the second ghost said as the two figures started to fade.
“I avenged you, father,” Garion called after them. It seemed important that they know that. He was never sure, however, if they had heard him.
Aunt Pol was leaning against the window frame with a look of exhaustion on her face.
“Are you all right?” Garion asked her, concerned.
“It’s a very difficult thing to do, dear,” she told him, passing a weary hand over her face.
But there was yet another flicker within the depths of the ice, and the familiar shape of the blue wolf appeared-the one who had joined Belgarath in the fight with Grul the Eldrak in the mountains of Ulgo. The wolf sat looking at them for a moment, then flickered briefly into the shape of a snowy owl and finally became a tawny-haired woman with golden eyes. Her face was so like Aunt Pol’s that Garion could not help glancing quickly back and forth to compare them.
“You left it open, Polgara,” the golden-eyed woman said gently. Her voice was as warm and soft as a summer evening.
“Yes, mother,” Aunt Pol replied. “I’ll close it in a moment.”
“It’s all right, Polgara,” the wolf woman told her daughter. “It gave me the chance to meet him.” She looked directly into Garion’s face. “A touch or two is still there,” she observed. “A bit about the eyes and in the shape of the jaw. Does he know?”
“Not everything, mother,” Aunt Pol answered.
“Perhaps it’s as well,” Poledra noted.
Once again another figure emerged out of the dark depths of the ice. The second woman had hair like sunlight, and her face was even more like Aunt Pol’s than Poledra’s. “Polgara, my dear sister,” she said.
“Beldaran,” Aunt Pol responded in a voice overwhelmed with love.
“And Belgarion,” Garion’s ultimate grandmother said, “the final flower of my love and Riva’s.”
“Our blessings also, Belgarion,” Poledra declared. “Farewell for now, but know that we love thee.” And then the two were gone.
“Does that help?” Aunt Pol asked him, her voice deep with emotion and her eyes filled with tears.
Garion was too stunned by what he had just seen and heard to answer. Dumbly he nodded.
“I’m glad the effort wasn’t wasted then,” she said. “Please close the window, dear. It’s letting the winter in.”
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS THE first day of spring, and King Belgarion of Riva was terribly nervous. He had watched the approach of Princess Ce’Nedra’s sixteenth birthday with a steadily mounting anxiety and, now that the day had finally arrived, he hovered on the very edge of panic. The deep blue brocade doublet over which a half dozen tailors had labored for weeks still did not seem to feel just right. Somehow it was a bit tight across the shoulders, and the stiff collar scratched his neck. Moreover, his gold crown seemed unusually heavy on this particular day, and, as he fidgeted, his throne seemed even more uncomfortable than usual.
The Hall of the Rivan King had been decorated extensively for the occasion, but even the banners and garlands of pale spring flowers could not mask the ominous starkness of the great throne room. The assembled notables, however, chatted and laughed among themselves as if nothing significant were taking place. Garion felt rather bitter about their heartless lack of concern in the face of what was about to happen to him.
Aunt Pol stood at the left side of his throne, garbed in a new silver gown and with a silver circlet about her hair. Belgarath lounged indolently on the right, wearing a new green doublet which had already become rumpled.
“Don’t squirm so much, dear,” Aunt Pol told Garion calmly.
“That’s easy enough for you to say,” Garion retorted in an accusing tone.
“Try not to think about it,” Belgarath advised. “It will all be over in a little while.”
Then Brand, his face seeming even more bleak than usual, entered the Hall from the side door and came to the dais. “There’s a Nyissan at the gate of the Citadel, your Majesty,” he said quietly. “He says that he’s the emissary of Queen Salmissra and that he’s here to witness the ceremony.”
“Isn’t that impossible?” Garion asked Aunt Pol, startled by the Warder’s surprising announcement.
“Not entirely,” she replied. “More likely, though, it’s a diplomatic fiction. I’d imagine that the Nyissans would prefer to keep Salmissra’s condition a secret.”
“What do I do?” Garion asked. Belgarath shrugged.
“Let him in.”