‘Does that mean that my prince has to stay in hiding?’ Brand asked

‘It seems to point that way doesn’t it?’ Beldin replied.

‘Who’s going to protect him?’

‘That’s my job, Brand,’ Polgara told him, removing her apron.

Then something happened that very rarely has. ‘Dost thou accept this responsibility freely, my daughter?’ It was Aldur’s voice, and we all turned around quickly, but he wasn’t there - only his voice and a peculiar blue light.

Polgara immediately understood the implications of the question. The element of conscious choice has always been rather central to the things we do. I’ll admit that I sort of blunder into things now and then, but there always comes that moment when I’m required to choose. Pol had come face to face with one of those choices, and she knew it. She crossed the tower room and laid her hand on Geran’s shoulder. ‘Freely, Master,’ she replied firmly. ‘From this day hence, I shall protect and guide the Rivan line.’

And in the moment that she said it, I felt one of those peculiar clicks inside my head. Pol’s choice had been one of those things that had to happen. I’m not sure exactly why, but I felt a sudden urge to leap into the air with a wild cry of exultation.

Looking back at it now, I realize that Pol’s choice was one of those EVENTS we keep talking about. Her choice ultimately led to Garion, and Garion in turn led to Eriond. At the time, we’d all assumed that our Necessity had given something up when it’d agreed to the separation of Geran from the Orb. I think we were wrong there. That separation was a victory, not a defeat.

Don’t look so confused. I’ll explain it to you - all in good time.

After she’d freely accepted her responsibility, Polgara started giving orders. She does that all the time, you know. ‘The Master has laid this task upon me, gentlemen,’ she told us firmly. ‘I don’t need any help, and I don’t need any interference. I’ll hide Geran, and I’ll make such decisions as need to be made. Don’t hover over me, and don’t try to tell me what to do. And don’t, please don’t stand around staring at me. Just stay away. Do we agree?’

Of course we agreed. What else could we do?

Chapter 35

There was no denying that Polgara’s interdiction made sense, so I didn’t see her very often during the next five centuries or so - or at least so she thought. I managed to keep track of her, however, even though she moved around a lot. Her general strategy was to submerge herself and the heir to the Rivan throne in the general population - usually in Sendaria. Sendaria’s a great place for anonymity, because racial differences don’t mean anything there, and Sendars are too polite to question people about their backgrounds. But even the politest Sendar’s going to start getting curious about someone who doesn’t age, so Pol seldom stayed in the same place for more than ten years.

That habit of hers gave me all sorts of entertainment. Finding someone who doesn’t want to be found isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and Pol became very skilled at misdirection. If she told her neighbors that there was a ‘family emergency’ in Darine, you could be fairly sure that she was actually bound for Muros or Camaar. Once during the forty-third century, it took me eight years to track her down. Her elusiveness didn’t really bother me much. If she could hide from me, she could certainly hide from anybody else.

She’d ordered me to stay away from her, so I grew quite proficient at disguises, although in my case I didn’t have to rely on wigs and false noses. A man who can change himself into a wolf or a falcon doesn’t have much trouble modifying his face or general physique.

Usually after I’d located her, I’d just drift into whatever town or village she was currently living in, snoop around a bit, and then drift back on out again without even talking with her.

I’ve always had a great deal of admiration for the Tolnedran system of highways. It made traveling much easier, and I had to travel a great deal during the early centuries of the fifth millennium. I did not, however, approve of Ran Horb’s treaty with the Murgos that opened the South Caravan Route.

At first, the Tolnedran trade with the Murgos was a one-way sort of business. Tolnedran merchants followed the caravan route to Rak Goska, conducted their business, and then came home with their purses filled to overflowing with that reddish-colored gold that comes out of the mines of Cthol Murgos.

Following the Alorn invasion of Nyissa, however, the Murgos developed an absolute passion for trade, and after a century or so it seemed that I couldn’t turn around any place in Tolnedra, Arendia, or Sendaria without seeing a scarred Murgo face.

The Tolnedrans spoke piously about the ‘normalizing of relations’ and the ‘civilizing influence of commerce,’ but I knew better. The Murgos were coming west because Ctuchik had told them to come west, and commerce had nothing to do with it. The fact that the Rivan line was still intact loomed rather large in all the prophecies, and Ctuchik sent his Murgos to look for Polgara and the heirs she spent that part of her life protecting.

It finally came to a head early in the forty-fifth century. Polgara was in Sulturn in central Sendaria with the current heir and his wife. The young man’s name just happened to be Darion.

I’m sure you noticed the similarity. It’s Polgara’s fault, really. Polgara adores traditions, so she speckled the Rivan line with repetitions and variations of about a half-dozen names. Polgara can be creative when she has to be, but she’d really rather not if she can possibly avoid it.

Anyway, Darion was a cabinet-maker, and quite a good one. He had a prosperous business on a side street down near the lake, and he lived upstairs over his shop with his wife, Selana, and with his aunt.

Does that sound at all familiar?

I was in Val Alorn when word reached me that the old Gorim of Ulgo had died and that there was a new Gorim in the caves under Prolgu. I decided that it might be a good idea for me to go to Ulgoland and introduce myself. I always like to stay on good terms with the Ulgos. They’re a little strange, but I rather like them.

Anyway, it was mid-autumn when I heard about it. I was going to have to hurry if I didn’t want to get snowbound in the mountains, and so I took the first ship that left Val Alorn for Sendaria - a ship that just ‘happened’ to be bound for the capital at the city of Sendar rather than the port at Darine. I could probably call that pure luck, but I’ve got some doubts about that.

The weather was blustery, so it was four days later when I wound up on a stone wharf in Sendar on a grey, cloudy afternoon. I bought a horse and took the Tolnedran highway that ran southeasterly toward Muros. About midway between Sendar and Muros, the highway just ‘happened’ to pass through Sulturn. Sometimes I get very tired of being lead around by the nose. Garion’s friend can be so obvious at times.

Since I was there anyway, and since I was getting a little saddle-sore, I decided to disguise myself and take a couple days off to do a little constructive snooping. I rode back into a grove of trees on a hill just outside Sulturn, dismounted and formed an image in my mind that was about as far from my real appearance as I possibly could make it and then flowed into it. The horse seemed a little startled. His new owner was quite tall, and he had coal-black hair and a bushy beard of the same color.

I rode on down into Sulturn, took a room in a run-down inn on the west side of town, and nosed around until evening. I asked innocuous questions and kept my eyes open. Pol and her family were still here, and all seemed normal, so I went back to the inn for supper.

The common-room of the inn was a low-ceilinged place with dark beams overhead. The tables and benches were plain, utilitarian, and unvarnished, and the fireplace smoked. There were perhaps a dozen people there, a few locals drinking beer from copper-bound wooden tankards, and several travelers eating the unappetizing stew that’s the standard fare in Sendarian inns from Camaar to Darine. Sendaria produces a lot of turnips, and turnip stew isn’t one of my favorite dishes.

The first face I really noticed when I entered belonged to a Murgo. He was wearing western-style clothes, but his angular eyes and the scars on his cheeks left no doubt about his race. He sat near the fireplace plying a rather tipsy Sendar with beer and talking about the weather.

Since he wouldn’t be able to recognize me anyway, I strode over, took a seat at the table next to his, and told the serving wench to bring me some supper.

After the Murgo’d exhausted the conversational potentials of the weather, he got down to business. ‘You seem well-acquainted here,’ he said to the half-drunk Sendar across the table from him.

‘I doubt that there are ten people in all of Sulturn that I don’t know,’ the Sendar replied modestly, draining his tankard.

The Murgo bought him another. ‘It seems that I’ve found the right man, then,’ he said, trying to smile. Murgos don’t really know how to smile, so his expression looked more like a grimace of pain. ‘A countryman of mine was passing through here last week, and he happened to see a lady that took his eye.’ A Murgo even looking at a non-Murgo woman? Absurd!

‘We have some real beauties here in Sulturn,’ the Sendar said.

‘My friend was in a hurry, so he didn’t have time to introduce himself to the lady in question, but when he found that I was coming here, he begged me to find out what I could about her - where she lives, what her name is, whether or not she’s married - that sort of thing.’ He tried to smile again, and this one wasn’t any better than the first had been.