‘Tis a wonderful clever fellow th’ man is, don’t y’ know,’ Beldin said to my father.

‘Will you stop that?’ father said irritably. Then he dipped his head slightly to General Cerran. ‘You’re a very useful man to have around, General. Most of my military experience has been with Alorns, and they tend to make things up as they go along. Careful planning seems to bore them for some reason.’

‘Belgarath!’ the grey-bearded King Eldrig objected.

‘It’s just a difference in approach, your Majesty,’ General Cerran smoothed things over. ‘Experience has taught me that things go wrong during military operations, and I try to take those things into account. My estimates are very conservative, but even if Urvon and Kal Torak don’t exactly follow my timetable, we’ll still have our defenses in place in plenty of time. I hate being late for social engagements, don’t you?’

‘You look upon war as a social engagement, General?’ father asked, sounding a bit startled.

‘I’m a soldier, Belgarath. A good war’s the closest thing a soldier has to a social life.’

‘He’s going to take some getting used to, isn’t he?’ Beldin chuckled. ‘He’s got a good mind, though.’

‘You’re too kind, Master Beldin,’ the general murmured.

Our strategy sessions progressed in a much more orderly fashion than they had at Riva. Cerran was a methodical man who ticked off such things as ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘how’ on his fingers. We’d already decided that ‘when’ would be determined by some fairly visible activity on the part of the two Angarak forces. Then we moved on to ‘where’. The Mrin told us that the final battle would take place in Arendia, and our convenient fiction that our knowledge of that had come from Drasnian Intelligence had been accepted by the Tolnedrans as a verified fact. Arendia’s a big place, though, and it wasn’t until the sixth year of the siege of the Stronghold that the twins wrested the exact location out of the Mrin. After that, we knew that the battle would take place at Vo Mimbre. All we had to do then was convince the Tolnedrans that we knew what we were talking about.

After one of our sessions, I motioned to Brand, and the two of us took a stroll around the rain-drenched grounds of the imperial compound.

‘You wanted to speak with me, Pol?’ Brand asked me.

‘We’re going to have to lead General Cerran rather gently, Brand,’ I replied. ‘I think you’re best qualified to do that. Cerran knows that the Alorn kings all defer to you, even though he doesn’t know exactly why.’

‘My overpowering presence, perhaps?’ he suggested.

“The outcome of a dice-game might be more in keeping with the basic Alorn character, Brand,’ I twitted him.

‘Polgara!’ he protested mildly.

‘Whatever the reason, Cerran looks upon you as the leader of the Aloms, so he’s going to listen to you rather carefully. Cerran likes to reason things out, so we’re going to have to stress the disadvantages of all other possible battlefields and then let him decide that Vo Mimbre’s the only possible place. If we don’t, he’ll feel obliged to have us spread our forces all over southern Arendia.’

‘That’d be disastrous,’ Brand exclaimed.

‘Moderately disastrous, yes. Now, then, I spent a great deal of time in Arendia during the third millennium, so I’m familiar with all the cities. You’re about to get an education in geography, dear boy. I want you to be very familiar with the terrain around every city in Mimbre. There are tactical disadvantages to almost any city on earth, and Mimbrate cities are no exception. Your job’s to stress the disadvantages of every town and city – except Vo Mimbre. It has its own disadvantages, but we’ll gloss over those. We don’t want General Cerran to choose any battleground except Vo Mimbre, so we’ll just close all the other doors to him so that he’s only got that one choice.’

‘You’re very good at this, Pol,’ he said admiringly.

‘I’ve had lots of practice. Wars are the national pastime among the Arends. A healthy sneeze can start a war in Arendia. I spent six hundred or more years trying to keep the Arends from sneezing at the wrong time. I’ll talk with Eldrig and the others, and they’ll back you up in your assessments of the various towns and cities.’

This would all be a lot easier if the Tolnedrans would just accept the fact that you and your father aren’t like other people.’

‘That goes against their religion, dear one,’ I said with a slight smile.

‘What is the basis of the Tolnedran religion, Pol?’

‘Money. The Tolnedrans invented it, so they think it’s holy. They’re afraid of magic because a magician could conceivably create money instead of swindling it out of others.’

‘Could you create money, Pol?’ His eyes had come alight at the mere mention of the idea.

I shrugged. ‘Probably, but why should I bother? I’ve already got more than I can spend. We’re getting off the path here. This Tolnedran superstition’s inconvenient, I’ll grant you, but we can work our way around it.’

After General Cerran had reached the conclusion we wanted him to reach, my father’s disposition started to go sour for some reason. I put up with his bad temper for about a week, and then I went to his room in the Cherek embassy to find out what his problem was.

‘This is the problem, Pol!’ he exploded, banging his fist down on the scroll of the Mrin. ‘It doesn’t make sense!’

‘It’s not supposed to, father. It’s supposed to sound like pure gibberish. Tell me about your problem. Maybe I can help.’

Father’s discontent with the passage in the Mrin lay in the seeming suggestion that Brand was going to be in two places at the same time. His tone was decidedly grouchy as he read it to me.’ “And the Child of Light shall take the jewel from its accustomed place and shall cause it to be delivered up to the Child of Light before the gates of the golden city.”‘ His frustration seemed right on the verge of driving him to destroy the scroll.

‘Calm down, father,’ I told him. ‘Apoplexy’s not going to solve anything.’ I saw the answer immediately, of course, but how was I going to explain it? ‘How long would you say that one of these EVENTS takes to run its course?’ I asked.

‘As long as it takes, I suppose.’