‘She’s a very pretty girl, and she absolutely adores me, for some reason.’
‘You are a rather charming gentleman, you know.’
‘That’s mostly a pose, dear lady,’ he admitted. ‘Under all that polish there’s still a gauche, insecure adolescent. Growing up can be so trying – or had you noticed?’
I laughed. ‘You have no idea of just how trying I found it, Kamion.’
He sighed, and I knew that it wasn’t a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m very fond of my intended bride, of course,’ he told me, ‘but candor compels me to admit that one word from you would put an end to my betrothal.’
I touched his hand fondly. ‘You know that I’m not going to say that Word, dear Kamion. I have much too far to go.’
‘I rather suspected that might be the case,’ he admitted. ‘The entire purpose of this little chat has been my desire to have you as a friend. I realize that actual friendship between men and women is unnatural – and probably immoral – but you and I aren’t ordinary people, are we?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Duty’s a cruel master, isn’t it, Polgara? We’re both caught up in the coils of destiny, I suppose. You must serve your father, and Iron-grip’s asked me to serve as one of his counselors. We’re both involved in affairs of state, but the problem lies in the fact that we’re talking about two different states. I’d still like to have you for a friend, though.’
‘You are my friend, Kamion, like it or not. You might come to regret it in time, but you’re the one who suggested it in the first place.’
‘I’ll never regret it, Pol.’
And then I kissed him, and a whole world of ‘might-have-beens’ flashed before my eyes.
We didn’t talk any more after that. Kamion gravely escorted me back to my rooms, kissed my hand, and went on back the way we had come.
I didn’t see any reason to mention that little interlude to Beldaran.
It was at my suggestion that father took Riva, Anrak, and Algar up into one of the towers of the Citadel for ‘conferences’ during the final days of Beldaran’s pregnancy. That’s not really a good time to have the men-folk underfoot.
Beldaran’s delivery was fairly easy – or so Arell assured me. It was the first time I’d ever witnessed the procedure, though, so it seemed moderately horrendous to me, and after all, Beldaran was my sister.
In due time, Beldaran was delivered, and after Arell and I’d cleaned the baby boy up, I took him to Riva. Would you believe that this ‘mighty king’ seemed actually afraid of the baby?
Men!
The baby, Daran, had a peculiar white mark on the palm of his right hand, and that concerned Riva quite a bit. Father’d explained it to us, though, so I knew what it meant.
The ceremony of introducing Iron-grip’s heir to the Master’s Orb the next morning moved me more than I can say. A very strange sensation came over me when the infant crown prince in my arms laid his hand on the Orb in greeting and he and I were both suffused with that peculiar blue aura. In an obscure way the Orb was greeting me as well as Daran, and I caught a brief glimpse of its alien awareness. The Orb and its counterpart, the Sardion, had been at the very center of creation and, before they were separated by ‘the accident’, they were the physical receptacle of the Purpose of the Universe. I was to be a part of that Purpose, and, since mother’s mind and mine were merged, she was also included.
Father and I stayed on at the Isle for another month, and then the old wolf started getting restless. There were some things he wanted to do, and my father absolutely hates having things hanging over his head. As he explained, the Gods of the West had departed, and we were now to receive our instructions through prophecy, and father definitely wanted to have a look at the two prophets who were currently holding forth – one in Darine and the other in the fens of Drasnia. The Master had advised him that the term ‘The Child of Light’ would be the key that’d identify the real prophets, as opposed to assorted gibbering madmen, and father yearned to hear that peculiar signal as a verification of authenticity.
Anrak sailed us to the Sendarian coast and dropped us off on a beach near where the city of Sendar now stands.
I found trekking through the trackless stretches of that seemingly endless primeval forest decidedly unpleasant. Had our expedition to Darine taken place a few years earlier when I was still ‘woodsy’ and unkempt, I might have enjoyed it, but now I missed my bathtub, and there were so many bugs. I can still survive in the woods when it’s necessary, but really!
I knew of an alternative to our fighting our way through the dense underbrush, of course, but the problem lay in how to broach the subject without revealing my second education – and its source. I dropped a few hints about the alternative mode of travel, but father was being impossibly dense, so I finally came right out and asked him, ‘Why should I walk when I can fly?’
He protested a bit, and I think that might have been because he didn’t really want me to grow up. Parents are like that sometimes. He finally agreed, though, and he explained the procedure of changing into another form at length. Then he explained it again – and again – until I was almost ready to scream with exasperation.
Eventually we got down to business, and I automatically assumed the familiar form of the snowy owl.
I wasn’t at all prepared for his reaction. Father tends to keep his emotions rather tightly controlled, but this time I think they got the better of him. Would you believe that he actually cried? A sudden wave of compassion swept over me as I finally realized just how much he had suffered when he thought that mother had died.
I chose the form of a different owl, and father ‘went wolf’, as he calls it. He was a very impressive wolf, I’ll give him that, and he could almost keep up with me.
We reached Darine in three days, and resumed human form before we entered the city and went looking for Hatturk, the local clan-chief. Along the way father gave me a brief history of the Bear-Cult. Aberrations appear in all religions from time to time, but the heresies implicit in the Bear-Cult are so absurd that no rational human could ever swallow such patent nonsense.
‘Who ever said the Bear-Cultists are rational?’ Father shrugged.
‘Are we certain that this Hatturk fellow’s a Cultist?’
‘Algar thinks so, and I respect Algar’s judgment. Frankly, Pol, I don’t care if Hatturk worships caterpillars just as long as he’s obeyed Algar’s instructions and put scribes to work copying down everything this prophet says.’
We slogged down the muddy street in the smoky early-morning light. I think every city in the northern latitudes has that continual pall hanging over it. A thousand chimneys are going to put out a lot of smoke, and, since the early morning air is quite still, the smoke just hangs there.
Hatturk’s house was a pretentious building made of logs, and it was literally crawling with overgrown, bearded Alorns dressed in bear-skins and all well armed. Frankly, the odor of the place was almost overpowering – a fragrance comprised of spilled beer, assorted open cesspools, rank bear-hides, unwashed and un-housebroken hunting dogs, and rancid armpits.
When a still-tipsy Alorn awoke his chief to announce father’s arrival, Hatturk came stumbling down the stairs, fat, bleary-eyed, and unkempt.
Father rather crisply told him why we’d come to Darine, and this ‘leader of men’ offered to take us to the house of Bormik, the supposed Darine prophet. Hatturk was probably still about half-drunk from the previous night, and I think he said much more than he’d have said if he’d been completely sober. Beer does have its uses, I suppose.
The