Guardians of the West

  Ce’Nedra drew herself up, squared her shoulders and carefully assumed a bright, optimistic smile. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go in.’

  Ran Borune lay in a vast canopied bed beneath a gold-colored coverlet. He had never been a large man, and his illness had wasted him down to a near-skeleton. His complexion was not so much pale as it was gray, and his beaklike nose was pinched and rose from his drawn face like the prow of a ship. His eyes were closed, and his thin chest seemed almost to flutter as he struggled to breathe.

  ‘Father?’ Ce’Nedra said so softly that her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  The Emperor opened one eye. ‘Well,’ he said testily, ‘I see that you finally got here.’

  ‘Nothing could have kept me away,’ she told him, bending over the bed to kiss his withered cheek.

  ‘That’s hardly encouraging,’ he grunted.

  ‘Now that I’m here, we’ll have to see about getting you well again.’

  ‘Don’t patronize me, Ce’Nedra. My physicians have given up entirely.’

  ‘What do they know? We Borunes are indestructable.’

  ‘Did someone pass that law while I wasn’t looking?’ The Emperor looked past his daughter’s shoulder at his son-in-law. ‘You’re looking well, Garion,’ he said. ‘And please don’t waste your time on platitudes by telling me how well I look. I look awful, don’t I?’

  ‘Moderately awful, yes,’ Garion replied.

  Ran Borune flashed him a quick little grin. Then he turned back to his daughter. ‘Well, Ce’Nedra,’ he said pleasantly, ‘what shall we fight about today?’

  ‘Fight? Who said we were going to fight?’

  ‘We always fight. I’ve been looking forward to it. I haven’t had a really good fight since you stole my legions that day.’

  ‘Borrowed, father,’ she corrected primly, almost in spite of herself.

  ‘Is that what you call it?’ He winked broadly at Garion. ‘You should have been there,’ he chuckled. ‘She goaded me into a fit and then pinched my whole army while I was frothing at the mouth.’

  ‘Pinched!’ Ce’Nedra exclaimed.

  Ran Borune began to chuckle, but his laughter turned into a tearing cough that left him gasping and so weak that he could not even raise his head. He closed his eyes then and dozed for a while as Ce’Nedra hovered anxiously over him.

  After a quarter of an hour or so, Lord Morin quietly entered with a small flask and a silver spoon. ‘It’s time for his medicine,’ he said softly to Ce’Nedra. ‘I don’t think it really helps very much, but we go through the motions anyway.’

  ‘Is that you, Morin?’ the Emperior asked without opening his eyes.

  ‘Yes, Ran Borune.’

  ‘Is there any word from Tol Rane yet?’

  ‘Yes, your Majesty.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m afraid the season’s over there, too.’

  ‘There has to be one tree somewhere in the world that’s still bearing fruit,’ the emaciated little man in the imperial bed said exasperatedly.

  ‘His Majesty has expressed a desire for some fresh fruit,’ Morin told Ce’Nedra and Garion.

  ‘Not just any fruit, Morin,’ Ran Borune wheezed. ‘Cherries. I want cherries. Right now I’d bestow a Grand Duchy on any man who could bring me ripe cherries.’

  ‘Don’t be so difficult, father,’ Ce’Nedra chided him. ‘The season for cherries was over months ago. How about a nice, ripe peach?’

  ‘I don’t want peaches. I want cherries!’

  ‘Well, you can’t have them.’

  ‘You’re an undutiful daughter, Ce’Nedra,’ he accused her.

  Garion leaned forward and spoke quietly to Ce’Nedra. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he told her and went out of the room with Morin. In the corridor outside they met General Varana.

  ‘How is he?’ the general asked.

  ‘Peevish,’ Garion replied. ‘He wants some cherries.’

  ‘I know,’ Varana said sourly. ‘He’s been asking for them for weeks. Trust a Borune to demand the impossible.’

  ‘Are there any cherry trees here on the palace grounds?’

  ‘There are a couple in his private garden. Why?’

  ‘I thought I might have a word with them,’ Garion said innocently, ‘explain a few things, and give them a bit of encouragement.’

  Varana gave him a look of profound disapproval.

  ‘It’s not really immoral,’ Garion assured him.

  Varana raised one hand and turned his face away. ‘Please, Belgarion,’ he said in a pained voice, ‘don’t try to explain it to me. I don’t even want to hear about it. If you’re going to do it, just do it, and get it over with, but please don’t try to convince me that it’s in any way natural or wholesome.’

  ‘All right,’ Garion agreed. ‘Which way did you say that garden was?’

  It wasn’t really difficult, of course. Garion had seen Belgarath the Sorcerer do it on several occasions. It was no more than ten minutes later that he returned to the corridor outside the sickroom with a small basket of dark purple cherries.

  Varana looked steadily at the basket, but said nothing. Garion quietly opened the door and went inside.

  Ran Borune lay propped on his pillows, his drawn face sagging with exhaustion. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he was saying to Ce’Nedra. ‘A respectful daughter would have presented her father with a half-dozen grandchildren by now.’

  ‘We’ll get to it, father,’ she replied. ‘Why is everyone so worried about it?’

  ‘Because it’s important, Ce’Nedra. Not even you could be so silly as to—’ He broke off, staring incredulously at the basket in Garion’s hand. ‘Where did you get those?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t think you really want to know, Ran Borune. It’s the kind of thing that seems to upset Tolnedrans for some reason.’

  ‘You didn’t just make them, did you?’ the Emperor asked suspiciously.

  ‘No. It’s much harder that way. I just gave the trees in your garden a little encouragement, that’s all. They were very co-operative.’

  ‘What an absolutely splendid fellow you married, Ce’Nedra,’ Ran Borune exclaimed, eying the cherries greedily. ‘Put those right here, my boy.’ He patted the bed at his side.

  Ce’Nedra flashed her husband a grateful little smile, took the basket from him, and deposited it by her father’s side. Almost absently she took one of the cherries and popped it into her mouth.

  ‘Ce’Nedra! You stop eating my cherries!’

  ‘Just checking to see if they’re ripe, father.’

  ‘Any idiot can see that they’re ripe,’ he said, clutching the basket possessively to his side. ‘If you want any, go get your own.’ He carefully selected one of the plump, glowing cherries and put it in his mouth. ‘Marvelous,’ he said, chewing happily.

  ‘Don’t spit the seeds on the floor like that, father,’ Ce’Nedra reproved him.

  ‘It’s my floor,’ he told her. ‘Mind your own business. Spitting the seeds is part of the fun.’ He ate several more cherries. ‘We won’t discuss how you came by these, Garion,’ he said magnanimously. ‘Technically, it’s a violation of Tolnedran law to practice sorcery anywhere in the Empire, but we’ll let it pass—just this once.’

  ‘Thank you, Ran Borune,’ Garion said. ‘I appreciate that.’

  After he had eaten about half of the cherries, the Emperor smiled and sighed contentedly. ‘I feel better already,’ he said. ‘Ce’Vanne used to bring me fresh cherries in that same kind of basket.’

  ‘My mother,’ Ce’Nedra said to Garion.

  Ran Borune’s eyes clouded over. ‘I miss her,’ he said very quietly. ‘She was impossible to live with, but I miss her more every day.’

  ‘I scarcely remember her,’ Ce’Nedra said wistfully.

  ‘I remember her very well,’ her father said. ‘I’d give my whole Empire if I could see her face just one more time.’

  Ce’Nedra took his wasted hand in hers and looked implo
ringly at Garion. ‘Could you?’ she asked, two great tears standing in her eyes.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ he replied in some perplexity. ‘I think I know how it’s done, but I never met your mother, so I’d have to—’ He broke off, still trying to work it out in his mind. ‘I’m sure Aunt Pol could do it, but—’ He came to the bedside. ‘We can try,’ he said. He took Ce’Nedra’s other hand and then Ran Borune’s linking the three of them together.

  It was extremely difficult. Ran Borune’s memory was clouded by age and his long illness, and Ce’Nedra’s remembrance of her mother was so sketchy that it could hardly be said to exist at all. Garion concentrated, bending all his will upon it. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead as he struggled to gather all those fleeting memories into one single image.

  The light coming in through the flimsy curtains at the window seemed to darken as if a cloud had passed over the sun, and there was a faint, far-off tinkling sound, as if of small, golden bells. The room was suddenly filled with a kind of woodland fragrance—a subtle smell of moss and leaves and green trees. The light faded a bit more, and the tinkling and the odor grew stronger.

  And then there was a hazy, nebulous luminosity in the air at the foot of the dying Emperor’s bed. The glow grew brighter, and she was there. Ce’Vanne had been a bit taller than her daughter, but Garion saw instantly why Ran Borune had always so doted on his only child. The hair was precisely the same deep auburn; the complexion was that same golden-tinged olive; and the eyes were of that exact same green. The face was willful, certainly, but the eyes were filled with love.

  The figure came silently around the bed, reaching out briefly in passing to touch Ce’Nedra’s face with lingering, phantom fingertips. Garion could suddenly see the source of that small bell sound. Ce’Nedra’s mother wore the two golden acorn earrings of which her daughter was so fond, and the two tiny clappers inside them gave off that faint, musical tinkle whenever she moved her head. For no particular reason, Garion remembered that those same earrings lay on his wife’s dressing table back at Riva.

  Ce’Vanne reached out her hand to her husband. Ran Borune’s face was filled with wonder, and his eyes with tears. ‘Ce’Vanne,’ he said in a trembling whisper, struggling to raise himself from his pillow. He pulled his shaking hand free from Garion’s grasp and reached out toward her. For a moment their hands seemed to touch, and then Ran Borune gave a long, quavering sigh, sank back on his pillows, and died.

  Ce’Nedra sat for a long time holding her father’s hand as the faint, woodland smell and the echo of the little golden bells slowly subsided from the room and the light from the window returned. Finally she placed the wasted hand gently back on the coverlet, rose, and looked around the room with an almost casual air. ‘It’s going to have to be aired out, of course,’ she said absently. ‘Maybe some cut flowers to sweeten the air.’ She smoothed the coverlet at the side of the bed and gravely looked at her father’s body. Then she turned. ‘Oh, Garion,’ she wailed, suddenly throwing herself into his arms.

  Garion held her, smoothing her hair and feeling the shaking of her tiny body against him and looking all the while at the still, peaceful face of the Emperor of Tolnedra. It may have been some trick of the light, but it almost seemed that there was a smile on Ran Borune’s lips.

  Chapter Eleven

  The state funeral for Emperor Ran Borune XXIII of the Third Borune Dynasty took place a few days later in the Temple of Nedra, Lion God of the Empire. The temple was a huge marble building not far from the Imperial Palace. The altar was backed by a vast fan of pure, beaten gold, with the head of a lion in its center. Directly in front of the altar stood the simple marble bier of Ce’Nedra’s father. The late Emperor lay in calm repose, covered from the neck down by a cloth of gold. The column-lined inner hall of the temple was filled to overflowing as the members of the great families vied with one another, not so much to pay their respects to Ran Borune, but rather to display the opulence of their clothing and the sheer weight of their personal adornment.

  Garion and Ce’Nedra, both dressed in deepest mourning, sat beside General Varana at the front of the vast hall as the eulogies were delivered. Tolnedran politics dictated that a representative of each of the major houses should speak upon this sad occasion. The speeches, Garion suspected, had been prepared long in advance. They were all quite flowery and tiresome, and each one seemed to be directed at the point that, although Ran Borune was gone, the Empire lived on. Many of the speakers seemed quite smug about that.

  When the eulogies had at last been completed, the white-robed High Priest of Nedra, a pudgy, sweating man with a grossly sensual mouth, arose and stepped to the front of the altar to add his own contribution. Drawing upon events in the life of Ran Borune, he delivered a lengthy homily on the advantages of having wealth and using it wisely. At first Garion was shocked by the High Priest’s choice of subject matter, but the rapt faces of the throng in the temple told him that a sermon about money was very moving to a Tolnedran congregation and that the High Priest, by selecting such a topic, was able thereby to slip in any number of laudatory comments about Ce’Nedra’s father.

  Once all the tedius speeches were completed, the little Emperor was laid to rest beside his wife under a marble slab in the Borune section of the catacombs beneath the temple. The so-called mourners then returned to the main temple hall to express their condolences to the bereaved family. Ce’Nedra bore up well, though she was very pale. On one occasion she swayed slightly, and Garion, without thinking, reached out to support her.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she whispered sharply under her breath, raising her chin sharply.

  ‘What?’ Garion was startled.

  ‘We can not show any sign of weakness in the presence of our enemies. I will not break down for the entertainment of the Honeths or the Horbites or the Vordues. My father would rise from his grave in disgust if I did.’

  The nobles of all the great houses continued to file past to offer their extensive and obviously counterfeit sympathy to the sable-gowned little Rivan Queen. Garion found their half-concealed smirks contemptible and their barbed jibes disgusting. His face grew more stern and disapproving as the moments passed. His threatening presence soon dampened the enjoyment of the Grand Dukes and their ladies and sycophants. The Tolnedrans were genuinely afraid of this tall, mysterious Alorn monarch who had come out of nowhere to assume Riva’s throne and to shake the very earth with his footsteps. Even as they approached Ce’Nedra to deliver their poisonous observations, his cold, grim face made them falter, and many carefully prepared impertinences went unsaid.

  At last, disgusted so much that even his Sendarian good manners deserted him, he placed his hand firmly on his wife’s elbow. ‘We will leave now,’ he said to her in a voice which could be clearly heard by everyone in the vast temple. ‘The air in this place has turned a trifle rancid.’

  Ce’Nedra cast him one startled glance, then lifted her chin in her most regal and imperious manner, laid her hand lightly on his arm, and walked with him toward the huge bronze doors. The silence was vast as they moved with stately pace through the throng, and a wide path opened for them.

  ‘That was very nicely done, dear,’ Ce’Nedra complimented him warmly as they rode in the gold-inlaid imperial carriage back toward the palace.

  ‘It seemed appropriate,’ he replied. ‘I’d reached the point where I either had to say something rather pointed or turn the whole lot of them into toads.’

  ‘My, what an enchanting thought,’ she exclaimed. ‘We could go back, if you want.’

  When Varana arrived back at the palace an hour or so later, he was positively gloating. ‘Belgarion,’ he said with a broad grin, ‘you’re a splendid young fellow, do you know that? With that one word you mortally offended virtually the entire nobility of northern Tolnedra.’

  ‘Which word was that?’

  ‘Rancid.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that one.’

  ‘Don’t be. It perfectly describes
them.’

  ‘It is a bit coarse, though.’

  ‘Not under the circumstances. It did manage to make you any number of lifelong enemies, however.’

  ‘That’s all I need,’ Garion replied sourly. ‘Give me just a few more years, and I’ll have enemies in all parts of the world.’

  ‘A king isn’t really doing his job if he doesn’t make enemies, Belgarion. Any jackass can go through life without offending people.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  There had been some uncertainty about which course Varana would follow once Ran Borune was gone. His ‘adoption’ by the late Emperor had clearly been a ruse with very little in the way of legality to back it up. The candidates for the throne, blinded by their own lust for the Imperial Crown, had convinced themselves that he would merely serve as a kind of caretaker until the question of the succession had been settled in the usual fashion.

  The issue remained in doubt until his official coronation, which took place two days after Ran Borune’s funeral. The gloating exultation among the contenders for the throne was almost audible when the general limped into the Temple of Nedra dressed in his uniform, rather than the traditional gold mantle which only the Emperor was allowed to wear. Obviously this man did not intend to take his elevation seriously. It might cost a bit to bribe him, but the way to the Imperial Palace was still open. The grins were broad as Varana, gleaming in his gold-inlaid breastplate, approached the altar.

  The pudgy High Priest bent forward for a moment of whispered consultation. Varana replied, and the ecclesiast’s face suddenly went deathly pale. Trembling violently, he opened the gold and crystal cask on the altar and removed the jewel-encrusted Imperial Crown. Varana’s short-cropped hair was annointed with the traditional unguent, and the High Priest raised the crown with shaking hands. ‘I crown thee,’ he declared in a voice almost squeaky with fright. ‘—I crown thee Emperor Ran Borune XXIV, Lord of all Tolnedra.’

  It took a moment for that to sink in. Then the temple was filled with howls of anguished protest as the Tolnedran nobility grasped the fact that by the choice of his imperial name, Varana was clearly announcing that he intended to keep the crown for himself. Those howls were cut off sharply as the Tolnedran legionnaires, who had quietly filed into place along the colonnade surrounding the main temple floor, drew their swords with a huge, steely rasp. The gleaming swords raised in salute.