Polgara the Sorceress (36 page)

All of Wacune went into deep mourning, but after about a week I put aside my own grief and went to the palace to speak with Alleran. His eyes were puffy from weeping as he stood at the table in his father’s study staring at those
fatal drawings. ‘It should have worked, Aunt Pol!’ he said in an anguished voice. ‘What went wrong? Everything was put together exactly according to these plans.’

‘It was the plans that were at the heart of the problem, your Grace,’ I told him.

‘Your Grace?’

‘You’re the Duke of Wacune now, my Lord, so you’d better pull yourself together. Even in time of grief, events move on. With your permission, I’ll make the necessary arrangements for your coronation. Pull yourself together, Alleran. Wacune needs you now.’

‘I’m not ready for this, Aunt Pol,’ he protested.

‘It’s either you or your son, Alleran, and he’s a lot less ready than you are. That festering sore called Asturia is on your western border, and Nerasin will jump on any perceived weakness. It’s your duty, your Grace. Don’t let us down’

‘If I could just figure out why this cursed thing flew all apart the way it did!’ he burst out, slamming his fist down on the drawings. ‘I’ve gone over all the arithmetic myself. It
should
have worked.’

‘It did, Alleran. It did exactly what that design called for it to do. The only problem with the arithmetic was that the computations concerning the strength of the structural beams were left out. The catapult didn’t work because it was too powerful. The frame should have been made of steel instead of wooden beams. The pressures were too great to be contained by a wooden frame. That’s why it tore itself apart.’

That much steel would have been very expensive, Aunt Pol.’

‘I think the wood was even more expensive, your Grace. Fold those drawings up and put them away. We have a great deal to do.’

Alleran’s coronation was subdued, but Corrolin traveled up from Vo Mimbre to attend, so that put a bit of iron in the back of the new Duke of Wacune. I sat in on their private discussions, but it probably wasn’t really necessary. Kathandrion had been wise enough not to raise his heir in a political vacuum, and the Mimbrate emissary to the court
at Vo Wacune had given Alleran instruction in the somewhat overly-involved courtesies of the Mimbrates. Their first meetings were a bit stiff, but as they came to know each other better, they started to relax. Their major concern was still Asturia, and that naturally drew them closer together.

It was in the autumn of that same year that Nerasin did something that pushed me very close to the line my father had repeatedly warned me not to cross.

Asrana and Mandorin were riding down to Vo Mimbre for what was probably only a social visit, and when they reached that band of trees that lines the River Arend and started upstream toward Vo Mimbre, a number of Asturian archers, who’d somehow managed to sneak down across the plains of Mimbre to the southern border, quite literally riddled my two dear friends with arrows. Nerasin had obviously discovered that Asrana’d been behind all the troubles he’d been having in Vo Astur, and so he’d taken some fairly typical Arendish steps.

When I heard about the deaths of my friends, I was very nearly overcome with grief. I wept for days and then steeled myself for revenge. I was quite certain that I could devise some things to do to Nerasin that would make strong men shudder in horror for several thousand years. Killane and his family wisely stayed clear of me when I came storming out of my room. My first stop was the kitchen. I was going to need some sharp implements to carry out my plans for Nerasin. My training as a cook gave me some interesting terms to work with. ‘Filleting’ had a nice sound to it, I thought, and so did ‘de-boning’. The idea of cutting out Nerasin’s bones one by one very slowly had an enormous appeal for some reason. My eyes brightened when I came across a cheese-grater.

‘All right, Polgara, put the tools back where you got them. You’re not going anywhere.’
It was mother’s voice.

‘He murdered my friends, mother!’
I burst out.
‘I’m not going to let him get away with that!’

‘I see that you’re becoming very adept at following local customs,’
she noted, and there was a faint touch of rebuke in her voice.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Why did the Master send you to Arendia?’

‘To put a stop to all their foolishness.’

‘Oh, now I understand. You’re going to wallow in that same foolishness so that you can see what it’s like. Interesting idea. Did you take the same approach in your study of medicine? Did you catch a disease so that you’d understand it better before you tried to cure it?’

‘That’s absurd.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you, Polgara. All this brooding about knives and meat-hooks and cheese-graters is exactly what you were sent to Arendia to put a stop to. Nerasin murdered your friends, so now you’re going to murder him. Then one of his relatives will murder you. Then your father will murder somebody else in Nerasin’s family. Then somebody will murder your father. Then Beldin will murder somebody else. And it will go on and on and on until nobody’s even able to remember who Asrana and Mandorin were. That’s what blood feuds are all about, Pol. Congratulations. You’re an Arend to your fingertips, now.’

‘But I loved them, mother!’

‘It’s a noble emotion, but wading in blood isn’t the best way to express it.’

That’s when I started to weep again.

‘I’m glad we had a chance to have this little chat, Pol,’
she said pleasantly.
‘Oh, incidentally, you’re going to need Nerasin a little later, so killing him and chopping him up for stew-meat wouldn’t really be appropriate. Be well, Polgara.’
And then she was gone.

I sighed and put all the kitchen implements back where I’d found them.

The funeral of Asrana and Mandorin was held at Vo Mandor in the autumn of 2327, and Alleran and I, quite naturally, attended. The Arendish religion isn’t good at funerals. Chaldan’s a warrior God, and his priests are far more interested in vengeance than in comforting survivors. Perhaps I’m being a little picky, but it seems to me that a funeral sermon based on the theme, ‘I’ll get even with you for that, you dirty rascal’ lacks a dignified, elegiac tone.

The blood-thirsty ranting of the priest of Chaldan who
conducted the funeral seemed to move Alleran and Corrolin, though, because after the funeral and the entombment of Mandorin and Asrana, they got down to some serious plotting about appropriate responses to Nerasin’s atrocious behavior. I chose to forego participation in this little exercise of pure Arendishness. I’d put my own Arendish impulses away along with the cheese-grater.

I wandered instead about the grim, gloomy halls of Mandolin’s fortress, and I ultimately ended up in Asrana’s dressing-room, where her fragrance still faintly lingered. Asrana had never really been what you’d call tidy, and she’d left things scattered all over her dressing table. Without even thinking, I started to straighten up, setting jars and bottles in a neat row along the bottom of her mirror, brushing away the faint dusting of face powder, and placing her combs and brushes at an aesthetically pleasing angle. I was in the act of setting down her favorite ivory comb when I changed my mind. I kept it instead, and I’ve carried it with me for all these years. It lies right now on my own dressing table, not fifteen feet from where I sit at this very moment.

Of course, I was not the only one who’d been totally incensed by the murders. As I mentioned, both Corrolin and Alleran took them very personally, and the simple blockade of the borders of Asturia tightened, becoming almost like a noose, and large raiding parties swept out of both Mimbre and Wacune, savaging Asturia with a kind of studied brutality.

Despite my best efforts, the Arendish civil wars had taken up almost exactly where they’d left off when I’d first gone there. The thing they called ‘Polgara’s Peace’ had fallen apart.

The situation in Asturia was growing more desperate as the months dragged by. Corrolin’s Mimbrate knights rode almost at will through the agricultural south and west of the Asturian duchy, and Wacite archers, who were at least as proficient as their Asturian counterparts, quite literally killed everything that moved along Asturia’s eastern frontier. At first this random violence seemed senseless, but when I berated Alleran for renewing the war, he gave me
that innocent look that Arends are so good at and said, ‘We aren’t making war on the Asturians, Aunt Pol. We’re making war on their food. Eventually, they’ll get hungry enough to take care of Nerasin all by themselves.’

It was a brutal, ugly way to make war, but nobody’s ever said that wars are pretty.

Nerasin grew increasingly desperate as food grew scarcer and scarcer on the tables in Vo Astur. His solution to his problem should have been obvious, but unfortunately, I completely missed it.

It all happened on a blustery night when I’d decided to stay home rather than go to the palace. The palace was the nerve-center of the ‘food-fight’, and the noise of messengers running through the halls waving dispatches announcing that ten Asturians cows and fourteen of their pigs had been killed that day was starting to get on my nerves. To my way of looking at things, the assassination of cattle hardly constituted a major victory, so I decided that I’d earned a quiet evening at home. I took a long, leisurely bath, ate a light supper, and retired early with a good book.

It was sometime after midnight when I was somewhat rudely awakened by Killane’s shouting. My personal maid – Killane’s youngest sister Rana, incidentally – was trying valiantly to keep him out of my bedroom, and he was just as valiantly trying to get in.

I muttered something that I won’t repeat here, climbed out of bed, and pulled on my robe. ‘What’s going on out here?’ I demanded crossly, jerking open my bedroom door.

‘It’s me oafish brother, me Lady,’ the slender little Rana said in disgust. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised at all t’ find that he’s been drinkin’.’

‘Go along w’ y’ now, Rana,’ Killane told her. ‘There be trouble at th’ palace, Lady Polgara,’ he said to me. ‘Y’d better be after puttin’ on some clothes. His Grace’s messenger’s waitin’ fery’ out in th’ sittin’ room.’

‘What’s happened, Killane?’

‘His Grace’s son’s bin spirited away by th’ cursed Asturians, me Lady, an’ th’ Duke wants y’ to come t’ th’ palace immediately.’

Tell the messenger I’ll be right with him,’ I said. Then I
closed the door and pulled on my clothes hurriedly, muttering curses under my breath. We’d had plenty of evidence to prove just how unprincipled Nerasin was. Why hadn’t I anticipated his next move?

Abduction has long played a significant role in international politics – as Garion and Ce’Nedra can testify – but the removal of Duke Alleran’s two-year-old son from the palace in Vo Wacune was the first time I’d ever encountered the practice. Some abductions are perpetrated purely for the ransom, and those are rather easily dealt with. A political abduction, however, doesn’t involve money, but behavior. A message had been found on the young Kathandrion’s bed, and it was fairly blunt. It told Alleran that if he didn’t pull back from Asturia’s eastern frontier, he’d never see his son alive again. Mayaserell was in hysterics, and Alleran wasn’t much better, so there wasn’t really much point in talking with them. I provided the court physicians with a compound of certain herbs that was strong enough to fell a horse, and then I spoke at some length with the young duke’s advisors. ‘We don’t have much choice,’ I told them finally. ‘Do as that message demands. Then send a dispatch to Duke Corrolin in Vo Mimbre. Tell him what’s happened here, and also tell him that
I’m
taking care of it. I want everybody to keep his nose out of this. I’ll deal with it, and I don’t want any enthusiasts running around cluttering things up for me.’ Then I went home to think my way through the situation.

The short-range solution would have been quite simple. Clearly, I wouldn’t be dealing with ‘talented’ people here, and locating the place where little Kathandrion was being held wouldn’t have been difficult, but then we’d have all had to sit around holding our breath while we waited for Nerasin’s next move. Clearly, I’d have to come up with something that would permanently keep the nominal Duke of Asturia out of mischief. Killing him would be permanent, of course, but then we’d have to deal with his successor. After what Nerasin had done to Asrana and Mandorin, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about keeping him alive, but the politics of the situation – and mother’s cryptic statement that someday I’d
need
Nerasin – strongly suggested that the
best hope for restoring peace to Arendia lay in compelling Nerasin to do exactly what I told him to do for the rest of his life and then insuring as best I could that he lived well into his eighties. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the rescue of Alleran’s son and the ‘civilizing’ of Nerasin should not be two separate acts, but should rather be combined.

Nerasin’s hired abductors could be holding the boy anywhere, but, in reality, that didn’t matter. I could get exactly what I wanted in Vo Astur itself. I didn’t have to tear the woods apart in a desperate search. Once I had Nerasin under my thumb, I could arrange for the boy’s return without endangering him or savaging vast tracts of Asturian real estate.

My next problem was standing just outside the door to my library when I prepared to leave the next morning. His red fringe of a beard was bristling, his arms were crossed defiantly, and his expression was adamantine. ‘I’ll not be after lettin’ y’ go off by yerself, Lady-O,’ he told me flatly.

‘Oh, Killane,’ I said, ‘be serious. I won’t be in any danger.’

‘Yer
not
goin’ off alone!’

‘How are you going to stop me?’ I asked mildly.

‘I’ll burn yer house down if y’ even so much as try!’

‘You
wouldn’t
!’

‘Try me!’

Now
that
was something I hadn’t anticipated. Killane had found my soft spot. I
loved
my house, and he knew it. His threat made me go cold all over. Still, I
had
to get to Vo Astur as quickly as possible, and that meant that I almost had to use the form of a falcon. No falcon alive could carry a Wacite Arend weighing just over twelve stone, however.