Polgara the Sorceress (71 page)

‘Their instructions, for the most part. Evidently the Ashabine Oracles gave Torak far more in the way of details
than the Mrin Codex gives us. The third day of this little confrontation’s going to be
very
important, father. The legions absolutely
must
be here, because their presence will force Torak to accept Brand’s challenge.’

His eyes brightened. ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘Isn’t
that
interesting?’

‘Don’t start gloating, father. Torak’s ordered Zedar to throw everything they’ve got at Vo Mimbre. If they can take the city, the advantage swings back to them. Once we go past that third day, we’ll be looking at an entirely different EVENT, and we don’t want that at all.’

‘Are they going to try to delay Eldrig’s war-boats?’ Beltira asked.

‘Zedar suggested it, but Torak said no. He doesn’t want to split his forces. How long is it until morning?’

‘Three or four hours,’ father replied.

‘I’ll have time for a bath, then.’

Father rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

Dawn stained the sky off to the west, but Zedar was obviously waiting for specific instructions before launching his attack. Then, as the rim of the sun peeped up over the Ulgo mountains, a home-blast came from the iron pavilion, and Zedar’s siege engines, all in unison, whipped forward to hurl a huge shower of rocks upon the city, and that began the battle of Vo Mimbre.

There was the usual adjusting of the catapults until the rocks were all hitting the walls instead of being scattered all over the city. Then things settled down into the tedious thudding of rocks smashing into the walls.

We could clearly see the Angarak troops massing at some distance behind the catapults. Still father waited. Then, about mid-morning, he ordered Wildantor to respond. The Asturian archers raised their bows and loosed their arrows in unison. The hail-storm of steel-tipped arrows fell onto the Thulls manning the siege-engines, and the bombardment of the walls stopped instantly. The surviving Thulls fled back into the teeth of the massed Angaraks, leaving their siege-engines unmanned and unprotected.

That was when Mandor signaled his mounted knights at the north gate. The gate opened, and the knights charged
out, armed with battle axes rather than lances. When they returned, Zedar’s siege-engines had all been reduced to kindling-wood.

I found the sound of Torak’s screams of rage and disappointment rather charming, actually. Evidently the idea that we might retaliate against his attacks had never occurred to him – as his childish temper-tantrum clearly demonstrated. Had he actually thought that we’d just meekly hand the city over to him just because he wanted it? I rather imagine that Zedar’s life hung by a thread at that point. Desperately, and obviously without thinking, he ordered a frontal assault on that north gate. The assault melted under a storm of arrows, and those few Angaraks who reached the walls were drenched with boiling pitch and then set on fire. The sun went down, and the first day was over. We were still safely inside the walls, and Zedar was obliged to return to Torak’s palace to report his failure. Mother and I both wanted to eavesdrop on
that
particular conversation.

As smoky evening settled over Vo Mimbre, mother and I merged again and flew on silent wings over the wreckage of Angarak to the place where Torak’s rusty palace stood.

‘Methinks I have erred, Zedar,’ Torak was saying ominously when we wriggled through our favorite little window. ‘An Angarak disciple would not have failed me so miserably this day. Should I summon Ctuchik or Urvon to replace thee?’

Zedar choked a bit on that. ‘Prithee, Master,’ he begged. ‘Permit me to redeem myself in thine eyes. I do now perceive mine error. Mine engines were not equal to the task I set them. I shall begin anew, and by first light shall engines invincible be at mine immediate disposal. Vo Mimbre is doomed, Master.’

‘Or
thou
art, Zedar,’ Torak replied in that dreadful, echoing voice of his. ‘Do that which is necessary to place me inside those golden walls by nightfall.’

‘Were it not for the restrictions which have been lain upon us, might I easily accomplish that task, Lord.’

“The restrictions have been lain upon
me,
Zedar. They need not be of concern to thee.’

Zedar’s eyes brightened. ‘Then I may proceed without fear of the chastisement of Necessity?’

“Thou art
commanded
to proceed, Zedar. Should that result in thy chastisement, it is no concern of mine. Take comfort in the fact that I shall always remember thee fondly when thou art gone, however. But this is war, Zedar, and wars do frequently carry off friends. It is regrettable, but the attainment of a goal doth always take precedence. Should it come to pass that thou must lay down thy life so that I may achieve mine ends, so be it.’

The casual indifference of the Dragon-God chilled Zedar’s blood, I’m sure, and it quite probably rearranged his thinking about just how important he was in Torak’s view of the world.

Mother and I returned to the city, and once again she told me to ‘go out and play’ while she continued her surveillance of our enemies. She wasn’t
quite
as cold-blooded about it as Torak had been, but still –

Then, even as I was going down the stairs to the throne-room, I realized that the battle had erased – or pushed into the background – Torak’s unwholesome lust for me. I was terribly disappointed in him. A genuine suitor would
never
have let anything as petty as the fate of the world distract him from what was supposed to occupy his every waking thought. I sadly concluded that he probably didn’t really love me as much as he’d claimed. Sometimes a girl just can’t depend on
anybody
to do what’s right.

Everyone was in the throne-room when I entered.

‘What are they up to, Pol?’ father asked. Father’s protests when I’d told him that I was ‘going out to have a look’ had been vehement, but his objections hadn’t been
quite
strong enough to prevent him from using every scrap of information I’d managed to pick up. I’ve noticed over the years that men frequently take strong positions that are mostly for show. Then, having established their towering nobility, they come back down to earth and take advantage of whatever turns up.

‘Zedar seems to have fallen out of favor,’ I answered my father’s question. ‘He was supposed to take Vo Mimbre
yesterday, and Torak was seriously put out with him for his failure.’

‘Torak’s never been noted for his forgiving nature,’ Beltira said.

“The years haven’t mellowed him very much, uncle.’

‘Were you able to pick up any hints about what we should expect tomorrow, Pol?’ father pressed.

‘Nothing very specific, Father. Torak himself is going to abide by the restrictions the Necessities have placed on him, but he as much as ordered Zedar to ignore them. He
did
say that he’d be just broken-hearted if the Necessities should obliterate Zedar for breaking the rules, but if that’s the way it turns out – ah, well. Zedar seemed to be quite upset about Torak’s willingness to feed him to the wolves.’

‘I wonder if our brother’s starting to have some regrets about changing sides yet,’ Belkira said with an almost saintly smile.

‘I rather think that Zedar’s going to follow his Master’s lead in this,’ I told them. ‘Zedar just
adores
his own skin, so he’s not likely to risk it. More probably he’ll order some Grolim priest – or several Grolim priests – to stick
their
necks out instead. Grolims are fanatics anyway, and the notion of dying for their God fills them with ecstasy.’

‘We could speculate all night about that,’ father said. ‘Just to be on the safe side, though, we’d better assume that they’ll try it and that it’ll work. If it doesn’t, fine; if it does, we’d better be ready. We might as well try to get some sleep now. I think we’ll all need to be alert tomorrow.’

The conference broke up, but father caught me in the hall afterward. ‘I think we’d better start repositioning our forces,’ he said. ‘I’ll go tell Cho-Ram and Rhodar to start closing up the gap between them and Torak’s east flank. Then I’ll go talk with Brand and Ormik and have them ease down from the north. I want those armies to be in place and fresh when Beldin gets here the day after tomorrow. Keep an eye on things here, Pol. Zedar might decide to get an early start.’

‘I’ll see to it, father,’ I replied.

It was well before dawn when Zedar’s new engines began hurling rocks at Vo Mimbre. He’d constructed mangonels,
over-sized catapults that could throw half-ton boulders at the walls. The thunderous crashing of those boulders shook every building in Vo Mimbre, and the sound was positively deafening. Worse yet, Zedar’s new engines had enough range to put them back out of the reach of Asturian arrows.

When father returned, he suggested that the twins could plagiarize from Zedar and build mangonels for us as well. As is always the case when there’s a parity of weaponry, the defenders of any fortified place have the advantage. Zedar was hurling rocks at our walls; we were throwing rocks – or fire – at people. Our walls stood; Torak’s Angaraks didn’t. Our showers of fist-sized rocks brained Angaraks by the score, and our rain-squalls of burning pitch created new comets right on the spot, since people who are on fire always seem to want to run somewhere.

Zedar became desperate at that point, and he uncharacteristically risked his
own
neck to summon a wind-storm to deflect the arrows of the Asturian archers when he mounted his next frontal assault. That was a mistake, of course. The twins knew Zedar very well, and they recognized the difference between
his
Will and that of some expendable Grolim’s. All they had to do at that point was follow his lead. If Zedar didn’t evaporate in a puff of smoke when he used the Will and the Word to do something, it was obviously safe to do something similar in the same way. Zedar
had
to take chances, but as long as we simply followed his lead, we weren’t in any danger. Blazing the trail in a dangerous situation probably didn’t make Zedar very happy, but Torak’s ultimatum didn’t give him much choice. The twins erected a barrier of pure force, and Zedar’s wind-storm was neatly divided to flow around the dead calm which had been suddenly clapped over Vo Mimbre.

Then, driven to desperation, Zedar enlisted the Grolim priests to help him dry out the sea of mud surrounding the besieged city. It took father and the twins a while to realize what was afoot, but by the time Zedar mixed the now-dry mud with his wind-storm to send clouds of billowing dust toward our walls, I’d already arrived at a solution. The twins and I broke off a piece of Zedar’s wind-storm, sent it swirling, tornado-like, several miles down the River
Arend, and then brought it back in the form of a waterspout. Then we relaxed our grip on it. The resulting downpour laid the dust, and we saw a horde of Murgos who’d been tiptoeing through the obscuring dust-storm. The Asturian archers took it from there.

Father’s contribution to the affair was a bit childish, but he seemed to enjoy it. Giving an enemy an abbreviated version of the seven-year itch doesn’t really accomplish very much, but father was quite proud of it, for some reason.

And so we’d survived the second day of the battle. I knew just how significant that was, but I hadn’t bothered to share the information – largely at mother’s insistence. ‘It would only confuse them, Pol,’ she assured me. ‘Men confuse easily anyway, so let’s just keep the importance of the third day to ourselves. Let’s not give your father an opportunity to wallow in excessive cleverness. He might upset the balance of things that are supposed to happen.’

I’m sorry to have let that out, mother, but father’s been just a little too smug lately. Maybe it’s time for him to find out what
really
happened at Vo Mimbre.

The Arendish poet, Davoul the Lame, a weedy-looking fellow with a bad limp and an exaggerated opinion of his own rather mediocre talent, perpetrated a literary monstrosity he called ‘The Latter Days of the House of Mimbre,’ during which he made much of Torak’s refusal to emerge from his rusty resting place. Davoul didn’t explain the Dragon-God’s reluctance, but I think that those of you who’ve been paying attention have already guessed exactly what was behind it. To put it quite bluntly, Torak was afraid of that third day, since the Ashabine Oracles told him that if his duel with the Child of Light were to take place on that third day, he’d lose. Evidently, he’d been forbidden to come out on the second day, so he’d been forced to rely on Zedar to take the city. Zedar had failed, and now Torak faced that day he so feared. When you get right down to it, though, all he really had to do was stay home. If he’d done that, he’d have won.

Don’t rush me. I’ll get to
why
he came out in my own time.

The key to our entire campaign was the Tolnedran legions, of course, so just before dawn, I flew down the River Arend to make sure that Eldrig’s war-boats were coming upstream with those vital reinforcements. I’ll admit that I was enormously relieved to see that they were approximately where they were supposed to be. Then Beltira left the city to join the forces we had deployed to the east, Belkira went north to join the Sendars, Rivans and Asturians, and father and I simply flew out and settled in a tree to watch and to call out our commands. Father, of course, was totally unaware of the fact that I wasn’t alone in that now-familiar owl. Fooling my father wasn’t very difficult – or very important. What really mattered was the fact that
Torak
didn’t know that mother was there either. Mother was the Master’s hidden disciple, and Torak didn’t even know that she existed. I’m absolutely convinced that it was
her
presence at Vo Mimbre that ultimately defeated the One-eyed God.

The business with all that horn-blowing had been father’s idea. It didn’t actually serve any purpose – except to satisfy father’s need for high drama. Members of our family were spread around among our forces, and we had much more subtle ways to communicate than tootling at each other, but father stubbornly insisted upon those periodic horn-concertos. I’ll admit that the Arends absolutely
loved
the idea of mysterious horn-blasts echoing from the nearby hills and also that those calls and responses made the Angaraks
very
nervous. The Nadraks in particular were edgy about the horn calls, and so Yar lek Thun sent scouts out into the woods to see what was happening. The Asturian archers with Brand’s force were waiting for them, and Yar lek Thun didn’t get the reports he yearned for.