Guardians of the West

  ‘You’d better go see what she wants, your Majesty,’ the Drasnian ambassador suggested. ‘If the Lady Polgara had just summoned me, I’d be running toward her door already.’

  ‘You don’t really have to be afraid of her, Margrave,’ Garion told him. ‘She wouldn’t actually hurt you.’

  ‘That’s a chance I’d prefer not to take, your Majesty. We can talk about the matter we were discussing some other time.’

  Frowning slightly, Garion went down the hall to the door of Aunt Pol’s apartment. He tapped gently and then went in.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said crisply. ‘I was about to send another servant after you.’ She wore a fur-lined cloak with a deep hood pulled up until it framed her face. Ce’Nedra and Xera, similarly garbed, were standing just behind her. ‘I want you to go find Durnik,’ she said. ‘He’s probably fishing. Find him and bring him back to the Citadel. Get a shovel and a pick from someplace and then bring Durnik and the tools to that little garden just outside your apartment window.’

  He stared at her.

  She made a kind of flipping motion with one hand. ‘Quickly, quickly, Garion,’ she said. ‘The day is wearing on.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Pol,’ he said without even thinking. He turned and went back out, half-running. He was nearly to the end of the hallway before he remembered that he was the king here, and that people probably shouldn’t order him around like that.

  Durnik, of course, responded immediately to his wife’s summons—well, almost immediately. He did make one last cast before carefully coiling up his fishing line and following Garion back to the Citadel. When the two of them entered the small private garden adjoining the royal apartment, Aunt Pol, Ce’Nedra, and Xera were already there, standing beneath the intertwined oak trees.

  ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ Aunt Pol said in a businesslike fashion. ‘I’d like to have the area around these tree trunks opened up to a depth of about two feet.’

  ‘Uh—Aunt Pol,’ Garion interposed, ‘the ground is sort of frozen. Digging is going to be a little difficult.’

  ‘That’s what the pick is for, dear,’ she said patiently.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to wait until the ground thaws?’

  ‘Probably, but it needs to be done now. Dig, Garion.’

  ‘I’ve got gardeners, Aunt Pol. We could send for a couple of them.’ He eyed the pick and shovel uncomfortably.

  ‘It’s probably better if we keep it in the family, dear. You can start digging right here.’ She pointed.

  Garion sighed and took up the pick.

  What followed made no sense at all. Garion and Durnik picked and spaded at the frozen ground until late afternoon, opening up the area Aunt Pol had indicated. Then they dumped the four bales of loam into the hole they had prepared, tamped down the loose earth, and watered the dark soil liberally with the water from the two casks. After that, Aunt Pol instructed them to cover everything back up again with snow.

  ‘Did you understand any of that?’ Garion asked Durnik as the two of them returned their tools to the gardeners’ shed in the courtyard near the stables.

  ‘No,’ Durnik admitted, ‘but I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.’ He glanced at the evening sky and then sighed. ‘It’s probably a little late to go back to that pool,’ he said regretfully.

  Aunt Pol and the two girls visited the garden daily, but Garion could never discover exactly what they were doing, and the following week his attention was diverted by the sudden appearance of his grandfather, Belgarath the Sorcerer. The young king was sitting in his study with Errand as the boy described in some detail the training of the horse Garion had given him a few years back when the door banged unceremoniously open and Belgarath, travel-stained and with a face like a thundercloud, strode in.

  ‘Grandfather!’ Garion exclaimed, starting to his feet. ‘What are—’

  ‘Shut up and sit down!’ Belgarath shouted at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do as I tell you. We are going to have a talk, Garion—that is, I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen.’ He paused as if to get control of what appeared to be a towering anger. ‘Do you have any idea of what you’ve done?’ he demanded at last.

  ‘Me? What are we talking about, Grandfather?’ Garion asked.

  ‘We’re talking about your little display of pyrotechnics on the plains of Mimbre,’ Belgarath replied icily. ‘That impromptu thunderstorm of yours.’

  ‘Grandfather,’ Garion explained as mildly as possible, ‘they were right on the brink of war. All Arendia would probably have gotten involved. You’ve said yourself that we didn’t want that to happen. I had to stop them.’

  ‘We aren’t talking about your motives, Garion. We’re talking about your methods. What possessed you to use a thunderstorm?’

  ‘It seemed like the best way to get their attention.’

  ‘You couldn’t think of anything else?’

  ‘They were already charging, Grandfather. I didn’t have a lot of time to consider alternatives.’

  ‘Haven’t I told you again and again that we don’t tamper with the weather?’

  ‘Well—it was sort of an emergency.’

  ‘If you thought that was an emergency, you should have seen the blizzard you touched off in the Vale with your foolishness—and the hurricanes it spawned in the Sea of the East—not to mention the droughts and tornados you kicked up all over the world. Don’t you have any sense of responsibility at all?’

  ‘I didn’t know it was going to do that.’ Garion was aghast.

  ‘Boy, it’s your business to know!’ Belgarath suddenly roared at him, his face mottled with rage. ‘It’s taken Beldin and me six months of constant travel and the Gods only know how much effort to quiet things down. Do you realize that with that one thoughtless storm of yours you came very close to changing the weather patterns of the entire globe? And that the change would have been a universal disaster?’

  ‘One tiny little storm?’

  ‘Yes, one tiny little storm,’ Belgarath said scathingly. ‘Your one tiny little storm in the right place at the right time came very close to altering the weather for the next several eons—all over the world—you blockhead!’

  ‘Grandfather,’ Garion protested.

  ‘Do you know what the term ice age means?’

  Garion shook his head, his face blank.

  ‘It’s a time when the average temperature drops—just a bit. In the extreme north, that means that the snow doesn’t melt in the summer. It keeps piling up, year after year. It forms glaciers, and the glaciers start to move farther and farther south. In just a few centuries, that little display of yours could have had a wall of ice two hundred feet high moving down across the moors of Drasnia. You’d have buried Boktor and Val Alorn under solid ice, you idiot. Is that what you wanted?’

  ‘Of course not. Grandfather, I honestly didn’t know. I wouldn’t have started it if I’d known.’

  ‘That would have been a great comfort to the millions of people you very nearly entombed in ice,’ Belgarath retorted with a vast sarcasm. ‘Don’t ever do that again! Don’t even think about putting your hands on something until you’re absolutely certain you know everything there is to know about it. Even then, it’s best not to gamble.

  ‘But—but—you and Aunt Pol called down that rainstorm in the Wood of the Dryads,’ Garion pointed out defensively.

  ‘We knew what we were doing,’ Belgarath almost screamed. ‘There was no danger there.’ With an enormous effort the old man got control of himself. ‘Don’t ever touch the weather again, Garion—not until you’ve had at least a thousand years of study.’

  ‘A thousand years!’

  ‘At least. In your case, maybe two thousand. You seem to have this extraordinary luck. You always manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘I won’t do it again, Grandfather,’ Garion promised fervently, shuddering at the thought of towering ice walls creeping inexorably across the world.

/>   Belgarath gave him a long, hard look and then let the matter drop. Later when he had regained his composure, he lounged in a chair by the fire with a tankard of ale in one hand. Garion knew his grandfather well enough to be aware of the fact that ale mellowed the old man’s disposition and he had prudently sent for some as soon as the initial explosion had subsided. ‘How are your studies going, boy?’ the old sorcerer asked.

  ‘I’ve been a little pressed for time lately, Grandfather,’ Garion replied guiltily.

  Belgarath gave him a long, cold stare, and Garion could clearly see the mottling on his neck that indicated that the old man’s interior temperature was rising again.

  ‘I’m sorry Grandfather,’ he apologized quickly. ‘From now on, I’ll make the time to study.’

  Belgarath’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said quickly. ‘You got into enough trouble fooling around with the weather. If you start in on time, not even the Gods could predict the outcome.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly mean it that way, Grandfather.’

  ‘Say what you mean, then. This isn’t a good area for misunderstandings, you know.’ He turned his attention then to Errand. ‘What are you doing here, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Durnik and Polgara are here,’ Errand replied. ‘They thought I ought to come along.’

  ‘Polgara’s here?’ Belgarath seemed surprised.

  ‘I asked her to come,’ Garion told him. ‘There’s a little bit of a problem she’s fixing for me—at least I think she’s fixing it. She’s been acting sort of mysterious.’

  ‘She overdramatizes things sometimes. Exactly what is this problem she’s working on?’

  ‘Uh—’ Garion glanced at Errand, who sat watching the two of them with polite interest. Garion flushed slightly. ‘It—uh—has to do with the—uh—heir to the Rivan Throne,’ he explained delicately.

  ‘What’s the problem there?’ Belgarath demanded obtusely. ‘You’re the heir to the Rivan Throne.’

  ‘No, I mean the next one.’

  ‘I still don’t see any problem.’

  ‘Grandfather, there isn’t one—not yet, at least.’

  ‘There isn’t? What have you been doing, boy?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Garion said, giving up.

  When spring arrived at last, Polgara’s attention to the two embracing oak-trees became all-consuming. She went to the garden at least a dozen times a day to examine every twig meticulously for signs of budding. When at last the twig ends began to swell, a look of strange satisfaction became apparent on her face. Once again she and the two young women, Ce’Nedra and Xera, began puttering in the garden. Garion found all these botanical pastimes baffling—even a little irritating. He had, after all, asked Aunt Pol to come to Riva to deal with a much more serious problem.

  Xera returned home to the Wood of the Dryads at the first break in the weather. Not long afterward, Aunt Pol calmly announced that she and Durnik and Errand would also be leaving soon. ‘We’ll take father with us,’ she declared, looking disapprovingly over at the old sorcerer, who was drinking ale and bantering outrageously with Brand’s niece, the blushing Lady Arell.

  ‘Aunt Pol,’ Garion protested, ‘what about that little—uh—difficulty Ce’Nedra and I were having?’

  ‘What about it, dear?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to do something about it?’

  ‘I did, Garion,’ she replied blandly.

  ‘Aunt Pol, you spent all your time out in that garden.’

  ‘Yes, dear. I know.’

  Garion brooded about the whole matter for several weeks after they had all left. He even began to wonder if he had somehow failed to explain fully the problem or if Aunt Pol had somehow misunderstood.

  When spring was in full flower and the meadows rising steeply behind the city had turned bright green, touched here and there with vibrantly colored patches of wildflowers, Ce’Nedra began behaving peculiarly. He frequently found her seated in their garden gazing with an odd, tender expression at her oak trees, and quite often she was gone from the Citadel entirely, to return at the end of the day in the company of Lady Arell all bedecked with wild flowers. Before each meal, she took a sip from a small, silver flagon and made a dreadful face.

  ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’ he asked her curiously one morning.

  ‘It’s a sort of a tonic,’ she replied, shuddering. ‘It has oak buds in it and it tastes absolutely vile.’

  ‘Aunt Pol made it for you.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Her medicines always taste awful.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said absently. Then she gave him a long look. ‘Are you going to be very busy today?’

  ‘Not really. Why?’

  ‘I thought that we might stop by the kitchen, pick up some meat, bread, and cheese, and then go spend a day out in the forest.’

  ‘In the forest? What for?’

  ‘Garion,’ she said almost crossly, ‘I’ve been cooped up in this dreary old castle all winter. I’d like some fresh air and sunshine—and the smell of trees and wildflowers around me instead of damp stone.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Arell to go with you? I probably shouldn’t really be gone all day.’

  She gave him an exasperated look. ‘You just said you didn’t have anything important to do.’

  ‘You never know. Something might come up.’

  ‘It can wait,’ she said from between clenched teeth.

  Garion shot her a quick glance, recognized the danger signals, and then replied as mildly as he could, ‘I suppose you’re right, dear. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have a little outing together. We could ask Arell—and maybe Kail—if they’d like to join us.’

  ‘No, Garion,’ she said quite firmly.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  And so it was that, shortly after breakfast, the Rivan King, hand in hand with his little queen, left the Citadel with a well-stocked basket, crossed the broad meadow behind the city, and strolled into the sunlight-dappled shade beneath the evergreens that mounted steeply toward the glistening, snow-capped peaks that formed the spine of the island.

  Once they entered the woods, all traces of discontent dropped away from Ce’Nedra’s face. She picked wildflowers as they wandered among the tall pines and firs and wove them into a garland for herself. The morning sun slanted down through the limbs high overhead, dappling the mossy forest floor with golden light and blue shadows. The resinous smell of the tall evergreens was a heady perfume, and birds swooped and spiraled among the tall, columnlike trunks, caroling to greet the sun.

  After a time, they found a glade, a mossy, open clearing embraced by trees, where a brook gurgled and murmured over shining stones to drop into a gleaming forest pool and where a single, soft-eyed deer stood to drink. The deer raised her head from the water swirling about her delicate brown legs, looked at them quite unafraid, and then picked her way back into the forest, her hooves clicking on the stones and her tail flicking.

  ‘Oh, this is just perfect,’ Ce’Nedra declared with a soft little smile on her face. She sat on a round boulder and began to unlace her shoes.

  Garion put down the basket and stretched, feeling the cares of the past several weeks slowly draining out of him. ‘I’m glad you thought of this,’ he said, sprawling comfortably on the sun-warmed moss. ‘It’s really a very good idea.’

  ‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘All my ideas are good ones.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’d go that far.’ Then a thought occurred to him. ‘Ce’Nedra,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something. All the Dryads have names that begin with an X, don’t they? Xera, Xantha—like that.’

  ‘It’s our custom,’ she replied, continuing to work on her shoelaces.

  ‘Why doesn’t yours, then? Begin with an X, I mean?’

  ‘It does.’ She pulled off one of her shoes. ‘Tolnedrans just pronounce it a little differently, that’s all.
So they spell it that way. Dryads don’t read or write very much, so they don’t worry too much about spelling.’

  ‘X’Nedra?’

  ‘That’s fairly close. Make the X a little softer, though.’

  ‘You know, I’ve been wondering about that for the longest time.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just never got around to it.’

  ‘There’s a reason for everything, Garion,’ she told him, ‘but you’ll never find it out if you don’t ask.’

  ‘Now you sound just like Aunt Pol.’

  ‘Yes, dear, I know.’ She smiled, pulled off her other shoe and wriggled her toes contentedly.

  ‘Why barefoot?’ he asked idly.

  ‘I like the feel of the moss on my feet—and I think that in a little bit I might go swimming.’

  ‘It’s too cold. That brook comes right out of a glacier.’

  ‘A little cold water won’t hurt me.’ She shrugged. Then, almost as if responding to a dare, she stood up and began to take off her clothes.

  ‘Ce’Nedra! What if someone comes along?’

  She laughed a silvery laugh. ‘What if they do? I’m not going to soak my clothes just for the sake of propriety. Don’t be such a prude, Garion.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s—’

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  She ran on light feet into the pool, squealing delightedly as the icy water splashed up around her. With a long clean dive, she disappeared beneath the surface of the pool, swam to the far side, where a large, mossy log angled down into the crystal-clear water, and surfaced with streaming hair and an impish grin. ‘Well?’ she said to him.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’

  ‘Of course I’m not.’

  ‘Is the mighty Overlord of the West afraid of cold water?’

  ‘The mighty Overlord of the West has better sense than to catch cold for the sake of a little splashing around.’

  ‘Garion, you’re getting positively stodgy. Take off your crown and relax.’

  ‘I’m not wearing my crown.’

  ‘Take off something else, then.’