Please be a little more forgiving. I was an absolute novice that day, after all.
‘My pleasure, Lady Polgara.’ It might have been his pleasure, but it certainly wasn’t mine. Did he have to be so graphic? As he spoke, I suddenly found myself awash in a sea of blood and looking out at an entire mountain range of loose brains. Brightly colored entrails snarled around my feet, and disconnected extremities floated by – twitching.
It was only by a supreme act of will that I was able to keep from throwing up all over the front of his chain-mail shirt.
Then dear, dear Kamion rescued me. ‘Excuse me, Sir Taygon, but Lady Polgara’s sister, our future queen, requires her presence. I know that we’ll all be made desolate by her absence, but a royal command cannot be disobeyed. I’m certain that a warrior of your vast experience can understand the importance of obeying orders.’
‘Oh, of course, Kamion,’ Taygon replied automatically. He bowed clumsily to me. ‘You must hurry, Lady Polgara. We mustn’t keep the Queen waiting.’
I curtsied to him, not trusting myself to answer. Then Kamion took my elbow and guided me away.
‘When you come back,’ Taygon called after me, ‘I’ll tell you about how I disemboweled an offensive Arend.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ I said rather weakly over my shoulder.
‘Do you really want to hear about it, my Lady?’ Kamion murmured to me.
‘Frankly, my dear Kamion, I’d sooner take poison’
He laughed. ‘I rather thought you might feel that way about it. Your face was definitely taking on a slight greenish cast there toward the end.’
Oh, Kamion was smooth. I began to admire him almost in spite of myself.
‘Well?’ my sister asked when I rejoined her, ‘how was it?’
‘Just wonderful!’ I replied exultantly. They were all smitten with me. I was the absolute center of attention.’
‘You’ve got a cruel streak in you, Polgara.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’ve been cooped up in here all afternoon, and you’ve come back to rub my nose in all your conquests.’
‘Would I do that?’ I asked her archly.
‘Of course you would. I can see you absolutely running through the halls to get back so that you could gloat’ Then she laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Pol. I couldn’t resist that.’
‘You’re above all that now, Beldaran,’ I told her. ‘You’ve already caught the man you want. I’m still fishing.’
‘I’m not sure that I’m the one who really caught him. There were a lot of other people involved in that fishing trip, too: Aldur, father – mother, too, probably. The notion of an arranged marriage is just a little humiliating.’
‘You do love Riva, don’t you?’
‘Of course. It’s humiliating all the same. All right, tell me what happened. I want every single detail.’
I described my afternoon, and my sister and I spent a great deal of our time laughing. Even as I had, Beldaran particularly enjoyed the reaction of the Rivan girls.
That afternoon was my last unsupervised excursion into the untamed jungle of the adolescent mating ritual. From then on, father sat scowling in a spot where everybody could see him. It wasn’t really necessary, of course, but there was no way that father could know that mother was already keeping an eye on me. His presence did set certain limits on the enthusiasm of my suitors, and I was of two minds about that. None of my suitors were likely to go too far with him sitting there, but I was fairly sure that I could take care of myself, and father’s insistence on being present robbed me of the chance to find out if I could.
For some reason Kamion made father particularly nervous, and I couldn’t understand exactly why. Kamion had exquisite manners, and he never once did anything at all offensive. Why did my aged sire dislike him so much?
Got you that time, didn’t I, Old Wolf?
Then King Cherek and his sons, Dras Bull-neck and Algar Fleet-foot, arrived for the wedding, and things began to get just a bit more serious. Despite the way Beldaran and Riva felt about each other, my sister had been right. Theirs was an arranged marriage. The possibility that my father might also decide to arrange one for me – just to protect me from all those fawning suitors – raised its ugly head. There was in those days – probably even still existing – the idea that women are intellectually inferior to men. Men did – and many still do – automatically assume that women are empty-headed ninnies who’ll fall prey to the first glib young man who comes along with certain ideas in his mind. The result, of course, is the virtual imprisonment of almost all women of a certain rank. What my father and all those other primitives can’t seem to realize is that we’ll resent that imprisonment and go to almost any lengths to circumvent it. That might help to explain why so many girls become involved with inappropriate young men. In most cases the character of the young man doesn’t make a jot of difference. The girl in question is driven by a desire to show them that she can do it, rather than by empty-headed lust.
That’s frequently the reason for so many arranged marriages. The father marries his daughter off as soon as possible to ‘protect’ her. After she marries, any dalliances she chooses to take up to amuse herself are her husband’s problem.
The possibility that father might choose to shackle me to either Dras or Algar made me distinctly uneasy for a while.
For some reason, mother had always been a bit vague about father’s now-famous trip to Mallorea, and I felt that I might need some information in order to counter any absurd notions that could come popping into his head. I went looking for uncle Beldin.
I found him high in one of the towers of the citadel. He was nursing a tankard of beer and looking out at the sullen black waves surging under a threatening sky. I broached the subject directly. ‘How much can you tell me about father’s expedition to Mallorea?’ I demanded.
‘Not much,’ he replied. ‘I wasn’t in the Vale when Cherek and the boys came to fetch him.’
‘You do know what happened, though, don’t you?’
‘The twins told me,’ he said, shrugging. ‘As I understand it, Cherek and the boys came slogging through the snow in the dead of winter with some kind of half-wit notion that the priests of Belar had dredged up out of what the Alorns call “the auguries”. Sometimes Chereks can be awfully gullible.’
‘What are auguries?’ I asked him.
‘Supposedly a way to foretell the future. The priests of Belar all get roaring drunk, and then they got a sheep and fondle his entrails. The Alorns have a quaint belief that sheep-guts can tell you what’s going to happen next week. I’d rather strongly suspect that the ale plays a large part in the ceremony. Alorns are enthusiastic about it. I don’t imagine the sheep care much for the idea, though.’
‘Who could possibly be gullible enough to believe something that absurd?’
‘Your incipient brother-in-law, for one.’
‘Oh dear. Poor Beldaran.’
‘Why this sudden interest in quaint Alorn customs, Pol?’ he asked.
‘It occurred to me that father might want to get me out of his hair by marrying me off to Algar or Dras, and I don’t think I’m ready for marriage just yet. I want to come up with some arguments to nip that in the bud.’
He