Polgara the Sorceress (19 page)

‘But – ’ the baron began to protest.

‘The matter
will
receive the Prince Regent’s full attention, old boy. Was there anything else?’

The baron began to splutter.

Kamion looked around. ‘Ah, corporal of the guard,’ he said to one of the soldiers at the door.

‘Yes, my Lord Brand?’

‘Could you find me a bushel basket somewhere?’

‘I think so, my Lord.’

‘Do be a good fellow and see what you can turn up.’

‘Of course.’

Kamion returned to the dais and then faced the assemblage. ‘One of the problems his Highness has been encountering lies in the fact that the finer points of many of your petitions are glossed over when you present them to the throne aloud, gentlemen, and what you have to say deserves better than that. As soon as the good corporal returns with that basket, he’ll pass among you and you can deposit your petitions in the basket. That way, you’ll all be able to go about your business without wasting time waiting for your turn to speak. Think of all the hours you’ll save that way, and all the important things you’ll be able to accomplish.’

They gaped at him. I knew for a fact that
most
of these nobles didn’t
have
anything better to do. The hours spent in the throne room were their only reason for existence.

Then the corporal returned with the basket and, at Kamion’s instruction, passed among the throng to receive all the laboriously prepared petitions, which were reluctantly surrendered.

‘Excellent, gentlemen!’ Kamion said. ‘Capital! Now, why
don’t we all go back to work?’ He glanced at the window. ‘Pity it’s raining,’ he noted. ‘If it weren’t, we could all go fishing. Shall we adjourn?’

Daran rose from his chair, and Kamion and I followed him from the hall.

‘You haven’t really done me any favors, Kamion,’ Daran complained when we reached our impromptu office. ‘Now I have to
read
all that idiocy.’

‘It won’t take very long, your Highness,’ Kamion assured him. He went to the fireplace and dumped the contents of the basket into the flames. ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘How clumsy of me.’

Daran and I collapsed in helpless laughter.

In many respects, I think it was Kamion’s urbane and civilized manner that helped me through the difficult time after Beldaran’s death. He was very wise, absolutely loyal, and he had a charm about him that made everything he touched go smoothly. I knew his wife quite well – well enough to know that although she wasn’t happy about the way his duties kept him away from her, she understood that his position required him to spend long hours with Daran and me. There was never anything improper about the relationship between Kamion and me, but had our situation been different –

Well, there’s no need to go into that, is there?

It was early in the summer of the year 2038 that something came up that was far more serious than long-winded petitions to the throne sententiously delivered. Although the coast-line of the Isle of the Winds looks barren and hostile, the interior valleys are often lush and fertile – particularly in the southern part of the island. Rank among the Alorns was – still is, probably – based on the ownership of land suitable for agriculture, and those southern valleys are highly coveted. There was a Baron Garhein, a typical Alorn bully, who lived down there, and he had a son, Karak, who, as it turned out, was a drunken brute. Their neighbor, Baron Altor, had a daughter, Cellan, who was a beautiful, gentle, and cultured girl. After extensive haggling, Garhein and
Altor arranged a marriage between their children, and the arrangements involved a dowry of land.

It was not a happy union. Karak came to the bridal chamber roaring drunk and forced his attentions on Cellan in the most brutal way imaginable. Things went downhill from there. Karak turned out to be a wife-beater, among other things, and word of this got back to Altor, who mounted an expedition to rescue his daughter. There were quite a few casualties on both sides, but Altor succeeded in taking his daughter home again. Then he declared the marriage null and void and took back the dowry. Garhein went up in flames – not so much about the wrecked marriage but rather about the loss of the land. The feud between the two began to expand as cousins, uncles, nephews, and the like enlisted on one side or the other. Solitary ploughmen were butchered, and crops and houses were burned.

Word of all this eventually reached the Citadel, and Daran, Kamion and I gathered in Kamion’s book-lined study to consider options.

‘They’re both very powerful men,’ Kamion told us gravely, ‘and they both have extended families. We’re going to have to take steps, or we’ll have another Arendia on our hands.’

‘Can a marriage actually be dissolved like that?’ Daran asked.

‘There are arguments on both sides about that, your Highness,’ Kamion replied. ‘In most cases, it depends on the relative power of the two fathers. If the husband’s father is the more powerful, the wife’s considered to be property. If it’s the other way around, she isn’t.’

Daran frowned. ‘Have I got a big enough army to go down there and force a settlement on those two hot-heads?’

‘I’d hold that in reserve, your Highness. Let’s try talking to them first. A general mobilization probably wouldn’t hurt, though. It’d be a demonstration of the fact that you aren’t happy about the situation.’

‘What shape is the treasury in, Aunt Pol?’ Daran asked me. ‘Can I afford a general mobilization?’

‘I suppose so – if you don’t drag it out too long.’ Then
an idea came to me. ‘Why don’t we hold a tournament instead?’

‘I’m sorry, Aunt Pol, but I didn’t understand that.’

‘It’s an Arendish custom, your Highness,’ Kamion explained. ‘It’s a sort of military contest involving archery contests, mock sword-fights, axe throwing, jousting matches – that sort of thing.’

‘What’s jousting?’

‘Two armored men try to knock each other off the backs of their horses with twenty-foot lances.’

‘What a peculiar notion.’

‘We could probably skip over that part,’ Kamion said. ‘Alorns don’t usually fight on horseback.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s really a very good idea, Pol. It’d give Garhein and Altor an idea of just how much force the throne can muster, and the nobles would have to pay their own way. We make our point without emptying out the treasury.’

‘What if nobody comes?’ Daran fretted.

‘They’ll come, dear,’ I assured him. ‘It’s a chance to show off. The planting’s all done now, so there’s nothing really very pressing to keep people away. It’ll be an honor to be invited, so we can be fairly sure that every nobleman on the Isle will put in an appearance.’

‘Including Garhein and Altor?’

‘Exactly. We can summon them to the Citadel during the festivities. They’ll already be here in the city anyway, so they won’t be able to refuse.’

And
we can make an object lesson of them,’ Kamion added. ‘There are other little disputes festering on various parts of the Isle. If you come down hard on Garhein and Altor, other nobles should get the point.’

‘That might be just a bit optimistic, Kamion,’ I suggested. ‘We
are
talking about Alorns, after all.’

The invitations to the games went out, and the City of Riva was teeming with burly Alorns when Altor and Garhein arrived. The fact that almost every able-bodied man on the Isle had responded to the Prince Regent’s invitation wasn’t lost on them. The regency wasn’t yet a year old, but Daran’s authority was already well-established. We gave the two feuding barons a bit of time to absorb that, and
then Daran summoned them to the Citadel. The meeting was held in the throne room where all the symbols of power were much in evidence.

I’ll state candidly here that my sympathies were wholly on the side of Baron Altor and his daughter in the light of Karak’s open brutality, but I’ll have to admit that the differences between Garhein and Altor were very slight. Both of them were big, burly, bearded, and not very bright. They wore chain mail shirts, but no swords, since Kamion had prudently decided to have everyone who entered the throne room disarmed at the door. Garhein had rusty-colored hair that stuck out in all directions, while Altor had greased-down black hair that looked much like a wet horsetail streaming down his back. Though it was early in the day, the brutish Karak was already drunk. He was a flabby young man with a sparse beard and unkempt hair, and I could smell him from half-way across the throne room. Altor’s daughter, Cellan, was the only one of the group to appear even remotely civilized. She was pretty, in a blonde, busty, Alorn sort of way, but her blue eyes were every bit as hard as her father’s.

The feuding families had been prudently seated on opposite sides of the Hall of the Rivan King. Word of the meeting had spread, and the hall was filled with curious onlookers.

Daran, Kamion and I’d had plenty of time to lay out exactly what we were going to do, so the entire event was carefully staged. The palace guard had been turned out, of course, and armed, hulking soldiers in mail shirts lined the walls just to make sure that there wouldn’t be any interruptions or surprises. We’d had Daran’s chair and table removed from the dais, so when we entered the packed hall, my nephew went directly to his father’s throne and sat down.

That caused quite a stir.

‘All right, then,’ Daran said crisply, ‘let’s get down to business here.’ There was a no-nonsense tone in his voice indicating that he was fully in charge. ‘My father’s distressed by certain things that’ve been happening on the southern end of the Isle, and we don’t want to upset him any further, do we?’ He leaned forward. ‘My Lord Barons
Garhein and Altor, come here.’ He pointed imperiously at a spot directly in front of the dais.

The two warring hot-heads approached warily.

‘I’m going to put a stop to all this nonsense right here and now,’ my sandy-haired nephew informed them. The next one of you who breaks the king’s peace had better start packing, because he’ll be moving immediately to the northern end of the Isle.’

‘Your Highness!’ Garhein protested. ‘It’s all rock up there! Nobody can live on the northern end of the Isle!’

‘If you draw your sword one more time, Garhein, you’ll get a chance to try. You could probably raise goats. Goats eat almost anything.’

Garhein’s son Karak lurched to his feet. ‘You can’t do that!’ he bellowed at Daran in a drunken voice.

‘Can you sober this fool up, Aunt Pol?’ Daran asked me.

‘Of course,’ I replied.

‘Would you, please?’

We’d been fairly certain that the beer-soaked Karak would interrupt at some point in the proceedings, so I was fully prepared.

Daran had already demonstrated
his
power. Now it was my turn. The fact that Elthek, the Rivan Deacon, was in attendance made my performance a bit excessive, I’ll admit. Daran, Kamion and I were spreading object lessons in all directions that day. ‘Bring that drunkard here,’ I instructed the huge Master of the Guard.

‘At once, Lady Polgara,’ the vastly bearded soldier replied. He bulled his way through the startled crowd, grasped Karak by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to the front of the Hall.

I held out my hand, snapped my fingers and willed a tankard to be there. Then I took a glass vial from my sleeve and poured the contents into the tankard. I raised the oversized cup and said, ‘Beer.’ There was an absolute silence in the Hall, so the sound of the stream of foamy, amber beer pouring out of empty air above the tankard was clearly audible. I glanced at Elthek and noted with some satisfaction that his eyes were bulging and his mouth gaped open. People who pretend to perform magic are always very
startled when they encounter the real thing. Then I advanced on the cringing, smelly Karak. ‘Now be a good boy and drink this,’ I instructed.

He looked at the tankard as if it were a snake and put both his hands behind his back.

‘Make him drink it, Sergeant,’ Daran instructed the Master of the Guard.

‘My pleasure, your Highness,’ the big soldier replied. He roughly seized one of the drunkard’s hands and interlaced his fingers with Karak’s. ‘Drink it!’ he thundered.

Karak struggled weakly.

Then the soldier began to squeeze – slowly. The sergeant had shoulders like an ox and hands the size of hams. He probably could have made a rock bleed just by squeezing it.

Karak rose up on his tiptoes, squealing like a pig.

‘Drink it!’ the Sergeant repeated.

‘Your Highness!’ Garhein protested.

‘Shut up!’ Daran snapped. ‘You people
will
learn to do as I tell you!’

The sergeant continued to squeeze Karak’s hand in that overpowering grip of his, and the drunkard finally snatched the tankard from my hand and noisily drank it.

‘Ah, Sergeant,’ I said to the soldier, ‘I expect that our young friend here might start feeling unwell in a few moments. Why don’t you take him over near the wall so he doesn’t splash all over everybody?’

The sergeant grinned broadly and dragged Karak off to one side where the sodden young man became noisily ill.

‘Lady Cellan,’ Daran said then, ‘would you be so good as to approach the throne for a moment?’

Cellan obediently, though a little hesitantly, came to the dais.

‘Do you wish to return to your husband?’ Daran asked.

‘Never!’ she burst out. ‘I’ll kill myself first! He beats me, your Highness. Every time he gets drunk – which is every day – he takes his fists to me.’

‘I see.’ Daran’s face hardened. ‘No decent man ever hits a woman,’ he declared, ‘so, by order of the throne, the marriage of Karak and Cellan is hereby dissolved.’

‘You can’t do that!’ Garhein roared. ‘It’s a woman’s duty to submit to her husband’s chastisement when she misbehaves.’

‘It’s also a nobleman’s duty to submit to chastisement from the throne when
he
misbehaves,’ Kamion advised him. ‘You’re pressing your luck, Baron Garhein.’

‘Now we come to the question of the ownership of that parcel of land,’ Daran said.

‘The land is
mine!’
Garhein bellowed.

‘It’s
mine!’
Altor countered. ‘It reverted to me entirely when his Highness dissolved the marriage.’