Polgara the Sorceress (73 page)

History reports that it was Brand who defeated Torak that day before the walls of Vo Mimbre, but history is wrong. It was
mother
who defeated him, and she used our combined voice to do it. In a peculiar way, my mother won the Battle of Vo Mimbre.

‘Prepare then to perish all!’ Torak thundered, but the faint hint of doubt in his voice suggested that he was not as absolutely certain as his doomsday pronouncement seemed to indicate. The Ashabine Oracles had warned him about the third day of the battle, but so firm was his belief that he’d face the Rivan King and his star-born sword on that day that when it was
Brand
who offered the challenge, Torak exultantly believed that he’d won and that the warning about the third day was no longer valid. It was that and only that that persuaded him to come out of the iron pavilion on that fatal day. What he failed to realize was that Brand wasn’t his opponent on that field, it was the Master’s Orb.

He’d emerged from his pavilion sublimely convinced that he was going to get everything he wanted on this day, and it was that conviction that led him to hurl his Will at
me;
but mother had simply shunted me out of the way and had answered for me, disdainfully rejecting him. The appearance of Brand instead of the Rivan King suggested to Torak that he’d win; mother’s scornful rejection suggested that he’d lose. Torak was a God, and he wasn’t equipped to deal with uncertainty. Thus it was with doubt gnawing at his soul that he rushed at Brand, flailing at him with that huge sword. There almost seemed to be a kind of desperation in his charge. Brand, on the other hand, seemed calm, even abstracted. His responses were studied, one might almost say slightly bored.

The duel seemed to last forever, with Torak growing more frenzied and Brand growing progressively more indifferent. Finally, the Dragon-God hacked his way through Brand’s defenses and cut a deep gash in Brand’s shoulder, and that was the signal we’d been waiting for without even knowing that we were waiting for it. I strongly suspect
that it was part of the agreement between the contending Purposes that Torak had to draw blood before Brand could overwhelm him. Brand’s shoulder gushed blood and father howled even as I screamed.

Then Brand was unleashed. His studied, almost bored expression vanished, replaced with an intent alertness. He scraped his sword-edge down across the face of his shield, cutting away the soldier’s cloak which had hidden what was embedded in the shield’s center. The Master’s Orb, all ablaze, struck the Dragon-God full in the face with its fire.

Of course that had been what the whole war had been about. We’d spent ten years and sacrificed thousands of lives with no other purpose than to bring Torak to a place where he’d be forced to face the Orb at a certain predetermined place and time.

I don’t think any of us had fully understood just how painful the presence of the Orb would be for the God of Angarak. He screamed as its baleful fire struck him and seared his face again. Screaming still, he cast off his shield and threw away his sword, desperately trying to cover his face.

And that’s when Brand struck him down. Swiftly seizing his sword-hilt in both hands, the Rivan Warder drove his blade directly into the maimed God’s left eye-socket where the Eye that was Not still blazed as brightly as it had on that day almost fifty centuries before when the Orb had punished him for raising it to crack the world.

Torak shrieked again, staggering back. He jerked Brand’s sword from his eye, and bright blood gushed forth. Weeping blood, the God of Angarak stood stock still for a moment. Then he toppled, and the very earth shuddered.

I don’t believe that anyone on that vast battlefield moved or made a sound for the space of a hundred heartbeats after that thunderous fall. What had just happened was such a titanic EVENT that I was a bit surprised that the sun didn’t falter and then stop in his inexorable course. I was probably the only one there who heard a single sound – the exulting sound of mother’s howls of triumph. My mother’s spent thousands of years in the form of the woman we know as
Poledra, but down in the deepest levels of her being, she’s still a wolf.

My own sense of triumph was heavily overlaid with relief. I’m usually very sure of myself, but my brief encounter with Torak’s Will had shaken me to the core of my being. I’d discovered that when Torak commanded, I
had
to obey, and that discovery had filled me with uncertainty and terror.

What followed the fall of Torak wasn’t pleasant. The Angaraks were surrounded and completely demoralized. To massacre them – and there’s no other word for it – was excessive, to say the very least. Brand, however, was implacable. Finally, General Cerran firmly suggested that enough was enough, but Brand was an Alorn at the very bottom, and when it comes to killing Angaraks, no Alorn can ever get enough. The butchery went on through the night, and when the sun rose, there weren’t any live Angaraks left on the battlefield.

Then, when there was no one left to kill, Brand, his wounded shoulder bandaged and his arm in a sling, ordered his Alorns to bring Torak’s body to him so that he could ‘look upon the face of the King of the World’ – only Torak’s body wasn’t there anymore. That’s when Brand rather peremptorily sent for my family and me. The twins, Beldin, father and I picked our way across the littered field to the hilltop where Brand stood surveying the wreckage of Angarak. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded of us in a tone I really didn’t like much.

‘Where’s who?’ Beldin replied.

‘Torak, of course. Nobody seems to be able to find his body.’

‘What an amazing thing,’ Beldin said sardonically. ‘You didn’t actually think you’d find him, did you? Zedar carried him off just as soon as the sun went down.’

‘He
what?’

‘Didn’t you tell him?’ Beldin said to father.

‘He didn’t need to know about it. If he had, he might have tried to stop it.’

‘What’s going on here?’ Brand’s regal tone was starting to irritate me.

‘It was part of the agreement between the Necessities,’ father explained. ‘In exchange for your victory, you weren’t to be allowed to keep Torak’s body – not that it’d have done any good if you had. This wasn’t the last EVENT, Brand, and we haven’t seen the last of Torak.’

‘But he’s dead.’

‘No, Brand,’ I told him as gently as I could. ‘You didn’t
really
think that sword of yours could kill him, did you? The only sword that can do that is still hanging on the wall back at Riva.’

‘Hang it all, Pol!’ he exclaimed.
‘Nobody
survives a sword-thrust through the head!’

‘Except a God, Brand. He’s comatose, but he
will
wake up again. The final duel’s still out in the future, and that one’s going to involve Torak and the Rivan king. That’ll be the one where they take out their
real
swords and where somebody
really
gets killed. You did very well here, dear one, but try to keep your perspective. What happened here was really nothing more than a skirmish.’

I could tell that he
really
didn’t like that, but his distinctly imperial behavior was starting to run away with him, and I felt that he needed to be brought up short. ‘Then all of this has been for nothing,’ he said dejectedly.

‘I wouldn’t exactly call it nothing, Brand,’ father said. ‘If Torak had won here, he’d own the world. You stopped him. That counts for something, doesn’t it?’

Brand sighed. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. Then he looked out over the bloody field. ‘I guess we’d better clean this up. It’s summer, and if we just leave all those bodies lying out there to rot, there’ll be a pestilence in Vo Mimbre before the snow flies.’

The funeral pyres were vast, and it took every tree from the forest just to the north to consume all those dead Angaraks.

After we’d tidied up, we discovered that Aldorigen and Eldallan had gone off some distance to discuss their differences. The discussion was evidently quite spirited, since they were both dead when they were finally discovered. There was a rather profound object-lesson in that fact. If Mimbre and Asturia were to continue their centuries-old
squabble, it was quite obvious that they’d soon go down that very same road.

There were hot-heads on both sides who’d have preferred to ignore the obvious, but Mandorin and Wildantor, the two Arendish heroes of the battle, stepped in to put an end to the bickering by the simple expedient of offering to fight any of their compatriots who were too fond of their antagonism to listen to reason. There’s a certain direct charm to the assertion that ‘If you don’t do it my way, I’ll kill you.’

Anyway, the two Arendish friends approached Brand with an absurd proposal. They offered him the crown of Arendia. As luck had it, I was close enough to Brand to dig my elbow sharply into his ribs to keep him from laughing in their faces. He managed to keep a straight face and diplomatically declined, pleading a prior commitment.

That bell that rings inside my head when two young people who are destined to marry meet for the first time had already given me the answer to Arendia’s political problems, and I’d obliquely suggested it to Brand – quite some time before the battle, actually. When he raised the possibility to Mandorin and Wildantor, however, they both burst out laughing. The reason for their laughter became obvious when the proposal was presented to Korodullin and Mayaserana. Terms such as ‘Mimbrate butcher’ and ‘outlaw wench’ do not bode well for the prospects of a happy marriage.

That’s when I stepped in. ‘Why don’t you children think this over before you make a final decision?’ I suggested. ‘You both need to calm down and talk it over between you – in private.’ Then I ordered them to be locked up together in a little room at the top of the south tower of the palace.

“They’ll kill each other, Pol,’ father predicted when we were alone.

‘No, actually they won’t. Trust me, Old Man. I know exactly what I’m doing. I
have
arranged a lot of marriages, after all.’

‘Not like this one – and if one of them kills the other, Arendia’s going to explode in our faces.’

‘Nobody’s going to get killed, father, and nothing’s going to explode. It may not look like it, but the notion of marrying
each other is already planted, and it’s starting to seep into their minds – slowly, I’ll grant you. They’re Arends after all, and nothing seeps through solid stone very fast.’

‘I still think it’s a mistake.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d care to make a wager on that, would you, father?’ I offered.

He glared at me and then left, muttering to himself. Father and I have occasionally made wagers with each other, and as nearly as I can recall, he hasn’t won any yet.

Then came the famous conference that resulted in what history calls ‘the Accords of Vo Mimbre’. We didn’t treat Tolnedra very well during that conference, I’m afraid. The presence of the legions at the battle had saved the world from Angarak enslavement, and then we turned right around and treated Tolnedra like a defeated enemy. First, however, we had to head off the enthusiastic Alorn Kings, who all wanted to offer Brand the crown of the King of the World. When Mergon, the Tolnedran ambassador, protested, the Alorns started flexing their muscles. Maybe someday, somewhere, there’ll be an international conference where everyone behaves like a civilized adult, but when it finally rolls around it’ll probably signal the end of the world.

My only real contribution to our impromptu get-together was so obscure that it didn’t even make sense to me at the time. It does now, of course, but that’s only in retrospect. I was adamant about it, and the others gave up and put it in the Accords just as I dictated it. ‘From this day forward upon her sixteenth birthday shall each Princess of Imperial Tolnedra present herself in the Hall of the Rivan King. In her wedding gown shall she be clad, and three days shall she abide there against the coming of the King. And if he comes not to claim her, shall she be free to go wheresoever her father, the Emperor, shall decree, for she shall not be the favored one.’

Mergon, the Tolnedran ambassador, objected violently, of course, but I had all these nice burly Alorns around me to flex their muscles and make dire predictions about what would happen if the Tolnedrans chose to ignore my simple little request.

That took care of the Tolnedran government, but it didn’t really have much impact on Ce’Nedra, who turned out to be the lucky girl. She seems to have had certain objections. She didn’t have a very high opinion of her pre-ordained husband in the first place, and when she discovered that he outranked her, she went up in flames. Rank and station were very important to Ce’Nedra, evidently. I’ll grant you that our tiny princess can be absolutely adorable – when she wants something – but she aged me far more than several dozen centuries ever did. To give you some idea of just how stubborn she could be, it finally took a God – Eriond – to get her anywhere near the Hall of the Rivan King on the appointed day. It’s entirely possible that Eriond will unify the world in peace and harmony, but that won’t even come close to his victory over Ce’Nedra that day in the caverns of Ulgo.

That, of course, brings us to the question of just
who
it was who prompted mother to insist that I slip that ridiculous obligation into the Accords of Vo Mimbre. If we were out to elect the most probable perpetrator, my vote would go to UL. I’m sure that Gods have a sense of humor, and UL’s would probably be the most obscure.

Note that I avoided the word ‘perverted’ there. Still, one
does
have to wonder about a God who turns his chosen people into moles, doesn’t one?

Despite my reservations about the Father of the Gods and his probable involvement, I
will
credit the Gorim of Ulgo with keeping the entire conference from blowing up into a general war. The very presence of ‘the holiest man in the world’ kept everyone at least marginally civil, and when he read the Accords to us after it was all over, the document had a faint tinge of ‘Holy Writ’, and the various items it contained seemed to have almost the force of religious obligations. People are used to doing peculiar things for religious reasons, so the fact that many things in the Accords didn’t make any sense was smoothed over as long as we all tacitly agreed to view them as religious.

It had taken us several weeks to hammer out the Accords,
and that had given Korodullin and Mayaserana enough time to stop talking about politics and get down to more important things. When Brand sent for them, they came hand in hand into the throne-room with that rather silly look on their faces that I recognized immediately. They’d
definitely
made peace with each other. I leaned over to whisper to my father almost as soon as the blushing pair entered. ‘I think you just lost our wager, Old Man,’ I said. ‘I seem to forget. What was it you put on the line when we made the bet?’