Polgara the Sorceress (38 page)

It was about noon when Killane and I returned little Kathandrion to Vo Wacune and his distraught parents. They fell all over themselves with gratitude and listened entranced to Killane’s somewhat exaggerated account of just how we’d obtained the boy’s release.

‘I think you can pull your archers out of Asturia now, your Grace,’ I told Alleran then. ‘The war’s over, so you can stop ambushing cows and pigs. Duke Nerasin’s seen the light and he’s going to behave himself from now on.’

‘You can’t trust that man, Aunt Pol!’ Alleran protested.

‘Beggin’ yer pardon, yer Grace,’ Killane said, ‘but th’ rascally Nerasin’ll do just exactly as Lady Polgara tells him t’ do – be it, “quit makin’ war” or “sit up an’ beg”. She’s got her fist wrapped around his tripes, don’t y’ know, an’ he squeals like a pig every time she squeezes.’

‘Do you really, Aunt Pol?’ Alleran asked me incredulously.

‘Killane’s language is a little colorful, Alleran, but you’ve known him long enough to realize that. The term “tripes” isn’t entirely accurate, but otherwise his description comes fairly close. From here on until the end of his life, Nerasin will fall down in a heap every time he does something that I don’t like. Oh, you’d better let Corrolin know that the war’s over as well, and then you two’d better start brushing up on your manners. Nerasin’s coming to the council meeting this summer.’

‘What?’
Alleran exploded. ‘After all the crimes he’s committed?’

‘Alleran, dear, that’s what those council meetings are for, remember? We settle disputes over the council table now instead of on the battlefield. Whether we like him or not, Nerasin rules Asturia, so he
has
to attend those meetings, and so do you and Corrolin.’

‘I’d be listening t’ her, yer Grace,’ Killane suggested warningly. ‘She knows exactly how t’ find a man’s tripes now, so I wouldn’t be after makin’ her cross, if I was you.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s yer own personal belly, though, so do as y’ see fit.’

What a treasure that man was!

Things were a bit stiff at the meeting of the Arendish Council that summer, but Nerasin,’ casting frequent nervous glances in my direction, was disgustingly obsequious. Alleran and Corrolin were curtly civil to him, but the pair of them obviously had something else up their sleeves. That made me a little nervous, so I watched them very closely. An Arend with a secret under his vest might be able to keep the secret itself in hiding, but concealing the fact that he’s
got
one is quite beyond his capabilities. Alleran and Corrolin were obviously ‘up to something’.

The actual business meeting didn’t last long, and it consisted mostly of the Dukes of Wacune and Mimbre dictating peace terms to Nerasin.

Then, when that was out of the way, Alleran rose to his feet. ‘My Lords,’ he announced quite formally, ‘methinks the time hath come for us to express our undying gratitude to she who guides us through the alien byways of peace.’ Then he looked directly at me. ‘We will brook no opposition in this, my Lady Polgara, for will ye, nil ye, this is our unalterable decision. There have ever been three duchies in Arendia, but from this day forward, that will no longer be true. Duke Corrolin rules Mimbre; Duke Nerasin leads Asturia; and I try as best I can to guide Wacune; but henceforth there will be a fourth duchy in our poor Arendia, and that duchy is thine. I bid thee welcome, your Grace.’ Then he looked around the pavilion. ‘All hail her Grace, the Lady Polgara, Duchess of Erat!’

‘Hail Polgara!’ everyone in the ornate tent responded, rising to their feet and then falling to their knees in an excessive genuflection.

Now
that
took me completely by surprise. I could immediately think of a dozen reasons why it wasn’t
appropriate, but Alleran’s assertion that they were going to do this to me whether I liked it or not silenced my objections. Since they’d seen fit to tack that ‘your Grace’ on to me, I decided to be gracious. I curtsied my acceptance, and they all cheered wildly. ‘My Lords,’ I spoke then, ‘this honor quite o’erwhelms me, and I shall strive to mine utmost to be worthy of it.’ Then, since they were all obviously
dying
for a speech, I saddled up my vocabulary and galloped it at full tilt around, through, and over the top of them for an hour or so. Then, when their eyes had started to glaze over, I wound down to a stirring conclusion and received the customary standing ovation.

They presented me with the elaborately decorated proclamation – signed by all three of them – that declared my duchess-hood, and appended thereunto was a description of the boundaries of my realm in profoundly tedious detail.

I didn’t really have time to read it because of the party that broke out at that point, but as best as I could gather from one brief glance, my duchy lay somewhere in what is now Sendaria. I gave the documents to Killane for safekeeping and then I was caught up in the giddy whirl of celebration of the founding of the fourth Arendish duchy.

It was fairly late that evening when I returned to my own pavilion to find Killane sitting at a small table illuminated by a pair of candles. He had a map of Sendaria and the scroll defining my boundaries in front of him, and his eyes were a little wild. ‘Have y’ looked at this, yer Grace?’ he asked me.

They didn’t really give me much time, Killane,’ I replied.

‘I wouldn’t be after tryin’ t’ ride around yer entire duchy in a single day, if I was you,’ he said, ‘nor in a week, fer that matter. Y’ go on
forever
up there!’ He laid his hand on the map. ‘I bin tryin’ t’ mark yer boundaries out on this map, an’ as close as I kin tell, either th’ dukes took leave o’ their senses, or some drunken scribe garbled some descriptions on this scroll. Look fer yerself, me Lady. I’ve inked in yer borders in red.’ He handed me the map.

I stared at it. ‘This is ridiculous!’ I exclaimed. ‘Let’s go see Alleran. I want some clarification of this.’

Alleran was very calm about it. He looked at Killane’s
map with no apparent surprise. ‘This looks about right to me, Aunt Pol,’ he said. ‘Is there some problem? You can have more land, if you’d like.’

‘Alleran,’ I said pointedly, trying to hold down my exasperation, ‘this is well over half of central Sendaria.’

‘So?’

‘What do you mean, “so?” You’ve got me stretched from Seline to Lake Camaar!’

‘Yes, I know. I notice that we didn’t give you an outlet to the sea, though. Would you like to have that coast between Sendar and Camaar? It’s awfully marshy there, but your serfs could probably drain those marshes for you. Did you want that island off the west coast?’

‘Serfs?’ I cut in.

‘Of course. They’re part of the land, Aunt Pol. When we get back to Wacune, I’ll send word to your vassals up there and have them all come on down and swear fealty to you.’

‘Vassals?’

‘Naturally. You didn’t think we were saddling you with open wilderness, did you?’ He coughed a slightly embarrassed little cough. ‘Actually, Aunt Pol,
I
provided the land for your duchy. I’m not sure which of my ancestors annexed all that ground up there, but it’s more than I can handle, to be honest about it. It’s not much of a present, is it? I gave you something I wanted to get rid of anyway.’

‘That
does
take some of the shine off my new title,’ I agreed.

‘I know, and I’m sorry. The people up there are strange. Sendaria’s been sort of ill-defined for so long that all kinds of people have migrated there. The races are all mixed together, and the population’s definitely not pure Arendish. I don’t know how to deal with them, but you’re far wiser than I am, so I’m sure you’ll manage better than I have. Your vassals – who used to be mine – are all pure Wacite Arends, however, so they’re more or less manageable.’ His expression grew slightly guilty then. ‘You’ll notice that I kept Darine, Muros and Camaar. I hate to appear parsimonious, but I really need the revenues from those three towns. My budget’s been very tight lately.’ Then he smiled slyly. ‘I’ll bet you thought that we were just handing you
an empty title, didn’t you, Aunt Pol? You’d probably better get rid of that notion right away. You’ve got a real duchy up north of the River Camaar, and you can do anything with it you wish.’ Then his smile became a smirk. ‘Now you’re going to find out what the rest of us have to go through every day, so I wouldn’t be too quick with any thanks, if I were you. Wait a little while first. Land and everything that goes with it is a responsibility, Aunt Pol, and sometimes it grows very heavy.’

I noticed that he glossed over the strategic location of the Duchy of Erat. Asturia had been the source of much of the trouble in Arendia for the past few centuries, and now Alleran, Corrolin, and I had that troublesome duchy hemmed in on the north, east, and south to pose a perpetual threat to Nerasin or anybody who might succeed him.

After we returned to Vo Wacune, Killane and I went on north to have a look at my new domain. I firmly declined Alleran’s offer of an armed escort. I wanted to see what was
really
going on up there, and I didn’t want knights, pikemen, and fanfares to announce my coming. We rode on up through Muros, took the road leading to Sulturn, and once we forded the north fork of the River Camaar, we were in ‘Erat’.

‘Tis fertile ground y’ve got here, me Lady,’ Killane observed on the second day after we’d crossed the river, ‘an’ ample water. With a bit o’ careful management, y’ could git ridiculously wealthy, don’t y’ know.’

I was looking at a shabby collection of mud and wattle huts huddled a couple of hundred paces back from the road, however, so I wasn’t really paying attention to my friend’s predictions. ‘Serfs?’ I asked, pointing at the miserable hovels.

‘It has th’ look of a serfs’ village,’ he agreed.

‘Let’s ride into that clump of trees just ahead,’ I said. ‘I want to go have a closer look.’

‘After y’ve seen one serfs’ village, y’ve seen ‘em all, me Lady,’ he said with a shrug.

‘That’s the whole point, Killane. I’ve never seen one up close.’

We rode back in among the trees, I dismounted, and then
I ‘went sparrow’. I flew on back to the huts to look around. There was no furniture inside those hovels, nor anything even remotely resembling a fireplace. Each of them had a pit filled with ashes and charred sticks instead, and each also had a heap of rags in one corner that evidently served as a communal bed. There were a few scrawny dogs wandering about and some equally scrawny children. I flew on out to the nearby fields and saw wretched, dirty people hacking at the earth with the crudest possible tools under the watchful eye of a hard-faced man on horseback.

The mounted man had a whip in his hand.

I flew on back to where Killane waited and resumed my own form. ‘That has to go,’ I told him very firmly.

‘Th’ village? Tis unsightly t’ be sure, me Lady, but th’ serfs’ve got t’ live someplace.’

‘I’m not talking about the village, Killane. I’m talking about serfdom itself.’

He blinked. ‘But th’ whole o’ society’s based on it, me Lady.’

‘Then I’ll just have to rebuild the society, won’t I? We’ll get to that in a little while, but keep it in mind. I will
not
live my life on the backs of slaves.’

‘A serf ain’t no slave, me Lady,’ he objected.

‘Oh, really? Maybe someday you can explain the difference to me. Let’s move along, Killane. There’s a lot more to see here than I’d imagined.’

We stopped in secluded places rather frequently, and I spent a great deal of time wearing feathers as I snooped out the reality that lay just under the surface of my seemingly placid realm. The lives of the serfs were miserable beyond imagining, and the nobility lived in idle luxury, spending – wasting actually – money that grew out of the sweat and misery of their serfs. I found my nobles to be stupid, cruel, lazy, and arrogant. I didn’t like them very much. That was also going to change.

We reached Sulturn and then turned north and rode on to Medalia, stopping frequently so that I could look into things. The land was fair, I found, but the society definitely wasn’t.

After we passed Medalia, we rode on up to Seline, then
turned east toward Erat. I tried as best I could to keep my equanimity. This wasn’t Killane’s fault, but he was the only person handy, so I don’t imagine that he enjoyed the trip very much.

‘If y’ don’t mind me sayin’ it, yer Grace,’ he said one afternoon when we were about half-way between Seline and Erat, ‘y’ seem t’ be a bit waspish. Is it somethin’ I’ve done?’

‘It’s not you, Killane,’ I said. There are a lot of things wrong here – terribly wrong.’

‘Well, fix em, Lady-O.’

‘That’s sort of what I had in mind, me boy-o.’

‘If I kin be persuadin’ y’ t’ set aside yer peevishness, y’ might want t’ give some thought t’ where y’ want t’ build yer capital, yer Grace. Yer title suggests Erat, but I’ve been there a time or two, and it ain’t th’ prettiest town in all th’ world, don’t y’ know, an’ th’ name “Vo Erat” ain’t all that pleasin’ t’ th’ ear.’

‘Let me think my way through this before we make any quick decisions, Killane,’ I suggested. ‘I’m not entirely sure that I
want
a capital city.’

‘Tis a cruel woman y’ are, Lady-O,’ he accused.

‘I didn’t exactly follow that.’

‘This’d be me one chance t’ design and build an entire city, don’t y’ know, an’ now y’ve gone an’ dashed me hopes. I could build y’ a palace that’d make th’ emperor of Tolnedra turn green w’ envy.’

‘What on earth do I need with a palace? I know who I am, and I don’t need some grand display to remind me. But that’s beside the point. My main concerns are still down in Arendia proper. Those clever little boys who put me here might prefer to have me get so involved in things up here that I’ll lose track of what they’re doing, but that isn’t going to happen. I’m definitely going to keep my house in Vo Wacune. I want them all to realize that they’re
not
going to get out from under my thumb this easily. Let’s move on, Killane. I want to have a look at Erat before I decide just where to set up shop.’

Erat, as it turned out, was totally unsuitable for a seat of government. North central Sendaria had changed hands so
many times over the centuries that the place was a hodgepodge of run-down and conflicting architecture. The whole thing would have had to be leveled and rebuilt to make it at all acceptable. The problem with that, however, lay in the fact that it was situated on the marshy north shore of the lake, and no matter what was ultimately erected there, it was still going to look like some town in the Drasnian fens.