“That’s a rotten thing to say,” Garion accused the little man.
Silk shrugged. “I’m a rotten sort of person,” he admitted.
“Where are you going after-” Garion left it hanging.
“After I see you safely married?” Silk suggested pleasantly. “As soon as I recover from all the drinking I’ll do tonight, I’ll be off for Gar og Nadrak. There’s a great deal of opportunity in the new situation there. I’ve been in contact with Yarblek. He and I are going to form a partnership.”
“With Yarblek?”
“He’s not so bad – if you keep an eye on him – and he’s very shrewd. We’ll probably do rather well together.”
“I can imagine.” Garion laughed. “One of you is bad enough all by himself, but with the two of you acting together, no honest merchant’s going to escape with his skin.”
Silk grinned wickedly. “That was sort of what we had in mind.”
“I imagine that you’ll get very rich.”
“I suppose I could learn to live with that.” Silk’s eyes took on a distant look. “That’s not really what it’s all about, though,” he noted. “It’s a game. The money’s just a way of keeping score. It’s the game that’s important.”
“It seems to me that you told me that once before.”
“Nothing’s changed since then, Garion,” Silk told him with a laugh.
Aunt Pol’s wedding to Durnik took place later that morning in a small, private chapel in the west wing of the Citadel. There were but few guests. Belgarath and the twins, Beltira and Belkira, were there of course, and Silk and Barak. Aunt Pol, beautiful in a deep blue velvet gown, was attended by Queen Layla, and Garion stood with Durnik. The ceremony was performed by the hunchbacked Beldin, dressed for once in decent clothing and with a strangely gentle expression on his ugly face.
Garion’s emotions were very complex during the ceremony. He realized with a sharp little pang that Aunt Pol would no longer be exclusively his. An elemental, childish part of him resented that. He was, however, pleased that it was Durnik whom she was marrying. If anyone deserved her, it was Durnik. The good, plain man’s eyes were filled with absolute love, and he obviously could not take them from her face. Aunt Pol herself was gravely radiant as she stood at Durnik’s side.
As Garion stepped back while the two exchanged vows, he heard a faint rustle. Just inside the door of the chapel, in a hooded cloak that covered her from head to foot and wearing a heavy veil that covered her face, stood Princess Ce’Nedra. She had made a large issue of the fact that by an ancient Tolnedran custom, Garion was not supposed to see her before their wedding on this day, and the cloak and veil provided her with the illusion of invisibility. He could imagine her wrestling with the problem until she had come up with this solution. Nothing could have kept her from Polgara’s wedding, but all the niceties and formalities had to be observed. Garion smiled slightly as he turned back to the ceremony.
It was the expression on Beldin’s face that made him turn again to look sharply toward the back of the chapel – an expression of surprise that turned to calm recognition. At first Garion saw nothing, but then a faint movement up among the rafters caught his eye. The pale, ghostly shape of a snowy owl perched on one of the dark beams, watching as Aunt Pol and Durnik were married.
When the ceremony was concluded and after Durnik had respectfully and rather nervously kissed his bride, the white owl spread her pinions to circle the chapel in ghostly silence. She hovered briefly as if in silent benediction over the happy couple; then with two soft beats of her wings, she moved through the breathless air to Belgarath. The old sorcerer resolutely averted his eyes.
“You may as well look at her, father,” Aunt Pol told him. “She won’t leave until you recognize her.”
Belgarath sighed then, and looked directly at the oddly luminous bird hovering in the air before him. “I still miss you,” he said very simply. “Even after all this time.”
The owl regarded him with her golden, unblinking eyes for a moment, then flickered and vanished.
“What an absolutely astonishing thing,” Queen Layla gasped.
“We’re astonishing people, Layla,” Aunt Pol replied, “and we have a number of peculiar friends – and relatives.” She smiled then, her arm closely linked in Durnik’s. “Besides,” she added with a twinkle in her eye, “you wouldn’t really expect a girl to get married without her mother in attendance, would you?”
Following the wedding, they all walked through the corridors of the Citadel back to the central fortress and stopped outside the door of Aunt Pol’s private apartment. Garion was about to follow Silk and Barak as, after a few brief congratulations, they moved on down the hallway, but Belgarath put his hand on his grandson’s arm. “Stay a moment,” the old man said.
“I don’t think we should intrude, Grandfather,” Garion said nervously.
“We’ll only stay for a few minutes,” Belgarath assured him. The old man’s lips were actually quivering with a suppressed mirth. “There’s something I want you to see.”
One of Aunt Pol’s eyebrows raised questioningly as her father and Garion followed into the apartment.
“Are we responding to some ancient and obscure custom, father?” she asked.
“No, Pol,” he replied innocently. “Garion and I only want to toast your happiness, that’s all.”
“What exactly are you up to, Old Wolf?” she asked him, but her eyes had an amused look in them.
“Do I have to be up to something?”
“You usually are, father.”
She did, however, fetch four crystal goblets and a decanter of fine old Tolnedran wine.
“The four of us started all this together quite a long time ago,” Belgarath recalled. “Perhaps, before we all separate, we should take a moment to remember that we’ve come a long way since then, and some rather strange things have happened to us. We’ve all changed in one way or another, I think.”
“You haven’t changed all that much, father,” Aunt Pol said meaningfully. “Would you get to the point?”
Belgarath’s eyes were twinkling openly now with some huge, suppressed mirth.
“Durnik has something for you,” he said.
Durnik swallowed hard. “Now?” he asked Belgarath apprehensively. Belgarath nodded.
“I know how much you love beautiful things – like that bird over there,” Durnik said to Aunt Pol, looking at the crystal wren Garion had given her the previous year. “I wanted to give you something like that, too – only I can’t work in glass or in gemstones. I’m a metalsmith, so I have to work in steel.” He had been unwrapping something covered in plain cloth. What he produced finally was an intricately wrought steel rose, just beginning to open. The details were exquisite, and the flower glowed with a burnished life of its own.
“Why, Durnik,” Aunt Pol said, genuinely pleased. “How very lovely.”
Durnik, however, did not give her the rose yet. “It has no color, though,” he noted a bit critically, “and no fragrance.” He glanced nervously at Belgarath.
“Do it,” the old man told him. “The way I showed you.”
Durnik turned back to Aunt Pol, still holding the burnished rose in his hand. “I really have nothing to give you, my Pol,” he told her humbly, “except an honest heart – and this.” He held out the rose in his hand, and his face took on an expression of intense concentration.
Garion heard it very clearly. It was a familiar, rushing surge of whispered sound, filled with a peculiarly bell-like shimmer. The polished rose in Durnik’s outstretched hand seemed to pulsate slightly, and then gradually it began to change. The outsides of the petals were as white as new snow, but the insides, where the flower was just opening, were a deep, blushing red. When Durnik finished, he held a living flower out to Aunt Pol, its petals beaded with dew.
Aunt Pol gasped as she stared incredulously at the rose. It was unlike any flower that had ever existed. With a trembling hand she took it from him, her eyes filled with sudden tears. “How is it possible?” she asked in an awed voice.
“Durnik’s a very special man now,” Belgarath told her. “So far as I know, he’s the only man who ever died and then lived again. That could not help changing him – at least a little. But then, I suspect that there’s always been a poet lurking under the surface of our good, practical friend. Maybe the only real difference is that now he has a way of letting that poet out.”
Durnik, looking just a bit embarrassed, touched the rose with a tentative finger. “It does have one advantage, my Pol,” he noted. “The steel is still in it, so it will never fade or wilt. It will stay just as it is now. Even in the middle of winter, you’ll have at least one flower.”