Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress: 2-Book Collection

‘What might have?’

‘Never mind.’

We nursed the limping Marag column back to their own borders, leaving thousands of dead behind us in those reeking swamps, and then Beldin and I returned to the Vale.

When we got there, our Master sent me back to Aloria. ‘The Queen of the Alorns is with child,’ he told me. ‘The one for whom we have waited is about to be born. I would have thee present at this birth and at diverse other times during his youth.’

‘Are we sure he’s the right one, Master?’ I asked him.

He nodded. ‘The signs are all present. Thou wilt know him when first thou seest him. Go thou to Val Alorn, therefore. Verify his identity and then return.’

And that’s how I came to be present when Cherek Bear-shoulders was born. When one of the midwives brought the red-faced, squalling infant out of the queen’s bedroom, I knew immediately that my Master had been right. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. Cherek and I had been linked since the beginning of time, and I recognized him the moment I laid eyes on him. I congratulated his father and then went back to the Vale to report to my Master, and, I hoped, to spend some time with my wife.

I went back to Aloria a number of times during Cherek’s boyhood, and we got to know each other quite well. By the time he was ten, he was as big as a full-grown man, and he kept on growing. He was over seven feet tall when he ascended the throne of Aloria at the age of nineteen. We gave him some time to get accustomed to his crown, and then I went back to Val Alorn and arranged a marriage for him. I can’t remember what the girl’s name was, but she did what she was supposed to do. Cherek was about twenty-three when his first son, Dras, was born, and about twenty-five when Algar came along. Riva, his third son, was born when the King of Aloria was twenty-seven. My Master was pleased. Everything was happening the way it was supposed to.

Cherek’s three sons grew as fast as he had. Alorns are large people anyway, but Dras, Algar, and Riva took that tendency to extremes. Walking into a room where Cherek and his sons were was sort of like walking into a grove of trees. The word ‘giant’ is used rather carelessly at times, but it was no exaggeration when it was used to describe those four.

As I’ve suggested several times, my Master had at least some knowledge of the future, but he shared that knowledge only sparingly with us. I knew that Cherek and his sons and I were supposed to do something, but my Master wouldn’t tell me exactly what, reasoning, I suppose, that if I knew too much about it, I might in some way tamper with it and make it come out wrong.

I’d gone to Aloria during the summer when Riva turned eighteen. That was a fairly significant anniversary in a young Alorn’s life back then, because it was on his eighteenth birthday that a description of him was added to his name. Four years previously, Riva’s older brother had become Dras Bull-neck, and two years after that, Algar had been dubbed Algar Fleet-foot. Riva, who had huge hands, became Iron-grip. I honestly believe that he could have crushed rocks into powder in those hands of his.

Poledra had a little surprise for me when I returned to the Vale. ‘One wonders if you have finished with these errands for a time,’ she said when I got home to our tower.

‘One hopes so,’ I replied. We didn’t exactly speak to each other in wolvish when we were alone, but we came close. ‘One’s Master will decide that, however,’ I added.

‘One will speak with the Master,’ she told me. ‘It is proper that you stay here for a time.’

‘Oh?’

‘It is a custom, and customs should be observed.’

‘Which custom is that?’

‘The one which tells us that the sire should be present at the births of his young.’

I stared at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I demanded.

‘I just did. What would you like for supper?’

Chapter 11 (#ulink_c7a0fc21-9eca-53a3-abc1-28988c7648ce)

Poledra largely ignored her pregnancy. ‘It’s a natural process,’ she told me with a shrug. ‘There’s nothing very remarkable about it.’ She continued attending to what she felt were her duties even as her waist-line expanded and her movements became increasingly awkward, and nothing I could do or say could persuade her to change her set routine.

Over the centuries, she’d made some significant alterations to my tower. As you may have heard, I’m not the neatest person in the world, but that’s never bothered me very much. A bit of clutter gives a place that lived-in look, don’t you agree? That all changed after Poledra and I were married. There weren’t any interior walls in my tower, largely because I like to be able to look out all of my windows when I’m working. I sort of haphazardly arranged my living space – this area for cooking and eating, that for study, and the one over there for sleeping. It worked out fairly well while I was alone. My location in the various parts of the tower told me what I was supposed to be doing.

Poledra didn’t like it that way. I think she wanted greater definition. She started adding furniture – tables, couches, and brightly colored cushions. She loved bright colors for some reason. The rugs she’d scattered about on the stone floor gave me some trouble. I was forever tripping over them. All in all, though, her little touches made that rather bleak tower room a more homey sort of place, and homeyness seems to be important to females of just about any species. I’d suspect that even female snakes add a few decorations to their dens. I was tolerant of these peculiarities, but one thing drove me absolutely wild. She was forever putting things away – and I usually couldn’t find them afterward. When I’m working on something, I like to keep it right out in plain sight, but no sooner would I lay something down than she’d pick it up and stick it on a shelf. I think putting up those shelves had been a mistake, but she’d insisted, and during the early years of our marriage I’d been more than willing to accommodate her every whim.

We had argued extensively about curtains, however. What is this thing women have about curtains? All they really do is get in the way. They don’t hold in any appreciable heat in the winter time, nor keep it out in the summer, and they get in the way when you want to look out. For some reason, though, women don’t feel that a room is complete without curtains.

She may have gone through that period of morning-sickness that afflicts most pregnant women, but if she did, she didn’t tell me about it. Poledra’s always up and about at first light, but I tend to be a late riser if I don’t have something important to attend to. Regardless of what my daughter may think, that’s not a symptom of laziness. It’s just that I like to talk, and evenings are the time for talk. I usually go to bed late and get up late. I don’t sleep any longer than Polgara does, it’s just that we keep different hours. At any rate, Poledra may or may not have endured that morning nausea, but she didn’t make an issue of it. She did develop those peculiar appetites, though. The first few times she asked for strange foods, I tore the Vale apart looking for them. Once I realized that she was only going to take a few bites, however, I started cheating. I wasn’t going to sprout wings and fly to the nearest ocean just because she had a sudden craving for oysters. A created oyster tastes almost the same as a real one, so she pretended not to notice my subterfuge.

Then, when she was about five months along, we got into the business of cradles. I was a little hurt by the fact that she asked the twins to make them instead of having me do it. I protested, but she bluntly told me, ‘You’re not good with tools.’ She put her hand on my favorite chair and shook it. I’ll concede that it wobbled a bit, but it hadn’t collapsed under me in the thousand or so years I’d been sitting in it. That’s sturdy enough, isn’t it?

The twins went all out in building those cradles. When you get right down to it, a cradle’s just a small bed with rockers on it. The ones the twins built, however, had elaborately curled rockers and intricately carved headboards.

‘Why two?’ I asked my wife after Beltira and Belkira had proudly delivered their handiwork to our tower.

‘It doesn’t hurt to be prepared for any eventuality,’ she replied. ‘It’s not uncommon for several young to be born at the same time,’ She laid one hand on her distended belly. ‘Soon I’ll be able to count the heartbeats. Then I’ll know if two cradles will be enough.’

I considered the implications of that and chose not to pursue the matter any further. There were some things I’d decided that I wouldn’t even think about, much less bring out into the open.

Poledra’s pregnancy may not have been remarkable to her, but it certainly was to me. I was so swollen up with pride that I was probably unbearable to be around. My Master accepted my boasting with fondly amused tolerance, and the twins were quite nearly as ecstatic as I was. Shepherds get all moony at lambing time, so I suppose their reaction was only natural. Beldin, however, soon reached the point where he couldn’t stand to be around me, and he went off to Tolnedra to keep watch over the second Honethite Dynasty. The Tolnedrans were establishing trade relations with the Arends and the Nyissans, and the Honeths have always been acquisitive. We definitely didn’t want them to start getting ideas about annexation. One war between the Gods had been quite enough, thank you.

Winter came early that year, and it seemed much more severe than usual. Trees were exploding in the cold in the far north, and the snow was piling up to incredible depths. Then on a bitterly cold day when the sky was spitting pellets of snow as hard as pebbles, four Alorns bundled to the ears in fur came down into the Vale. I was able to recognize them from a considerable distance because of their size.

‘Well met, Ancient Belgarath,’ Cherek Bear-shoulders greeted me when I went out to meet him and his sons. I wish people wouldn’t call me that.

‘You’re a long way from home, Cherek,’ I noted. ‘Is there some sort of problem?’

‘Just the opposite, Revered One,’ Dras Bull-neck rumbled at me. Dras was even bigger than his father, and his voice came up out of his boots. ‘My brothers have found a way to reach Mallorea.’

I looked quickly at Iron-grip and Fleet-foot. Riva was nearly as tall as Dras, but leaner. He had a fierce black beard and piercing blue eyes. Algar, the silent brother, was clean-shaven, and he had the rangy limbs of a coursing hound. ‘We were hunting,’ Riva explained. ‘There are white bears in the far north, and mother’s birthday is in the spring. Algar and I wanted to give her a white fur cape as a present. She’d like that, wouldn’t she?’ There was a strange, boyish innocence about Riva. It’s not that he was stupid or anything. It was just that he was eager to please and always enthusiastic. Sometimes he almost seemed to bubble.

Algar, of course, didn’t say anything. He almost never did. He was the most close-mouthed man I’ve ever known.

‘I’ve heard about those white bears,’ I said. ‘Isn’t hunting them just a little dangerous?’

Riva shrugged. ‘There were two of us,’ he said – as if that would make a difference to a fourteen-foot bear weighing almost a ton. ‘Anyway, the ice is very thick in the northern reaches of the Sea of the East this year. We’d wounded a bear, and he was trying to get away from us. We were chasing him, and that’s when we found the bridge.’

‘What bridge?’

‘The one that crosses over to Mallorea.’ He said it in the most off-hand way imaginable, as if the discovery of something the Alorns had been trying to find for two thousand years wasn’t really all that important.

‘I don’t suppose you’d care to give me a few details about this bridge?’ I suggested.

‘I was just getting to that. There’s a point that juts out to the east up in Morindland, and another that juts toward the west out of the lands of the Karands over in Mallorea. There’s a string of rocky little islets that connects the two. The bear had gotten away from us somehow. It was sort of foggy that day, and it’s very hard to see a white bear in the fog. Algar and I were curious, so we crossed the ice, following that string of islands. About mid-afternoon a breeze came up and blew off the fog. We looked up, and there was Mallorea. We decided not to go exploring, though. There’s no point in letting Torak know that we’ve discovered the bridge, is there? We turned around and came back. We ran across a tribe of Morindim and they told us that they’ve been using that bridge for centuries to visit the Karands. A Morind will give you anything he owns for a string of glass beads, and Karandese traders seem to know that. The Morinds will trade ivory walrus tusks and priceless sea-otter skins and the hides of those dangerous white bears for a string of beads you can buy in any country fair for a penny.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I hate it when people cheat other people, don’t you?’ Riva definitely had opinions.

Bear-shoulders gave me a rueful smile. ‘We could have found out about this years ago if we’d taken the trouble to spend some time with the Morindim. We’ve been tearing the north apart for two thousand years trying to find some way to cross over to Mallorea and pick up the war with the Angaraks where we left off, and the Morindim knew the way all along. We’ve got to learn to pay more attention to our neighbors.’

As nearly as I can recall, that’s fairly close to the way the conversation went. Those of you who’ve read the BOOK OF ALORN will realize that the priest of Belar who wrote those early passages took a great deal of liberty with his material. It just goes to show you that you should never trust a priest to be entirely factual.

I gave Cherek Bear-shoulders a rather hard look. I could see where this was going. ‘This is all very interesting, Cherek, but why are you bringing it to me?’

‘We thought you’d like to know, Belgarath,’ he said with an ingeniously feigned look of innocence. Cherek was a very shrewd man, but he could be terribly transparent sometimes.

‘Don’t try to be coy with me, Cherek,’ I told him. ‘Exactly what have you got on your mind?’

‘It’s not really all that complicated, Belgarath. The boys and I thought we might drift on over to Mallorea and steal your Master’s Orb back from Torak One-eye.’ He said it as if he were proposing a stroll in the park. ‘Then we got to thinking that you might want to come along, so we decided to come down here and invite you.’