Читать книгу Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress: 2-Book Collection - David Eddings - Страница 31

I won’t be able to give you a coherent account of the next several months, because I don’t really remember them. I had a few rational interludes, but they jump out at me with stark clarity, totally disconnected from what happened before or after. I try very hard to suppress those memories, since disinterring a period of madness isn’t a particularly pleasant way to pass the time.

If Aldur hadn’t left us, things might have been easier for me, but Necessity had taken him from me at the worst possible time. So it seemed to me that I was alone with only my unbearable grief for company. There’s no real point in beating this into the ground. I know now that what happened was necessary. Why don’t we just let it go at that?

I seem to remember long periods of being chained to my bed with Beldin and the twins taking turns watching over me and ruthlessly crushing every attempt I made to gather my Will. They were not going to let me follow the examples set by Belsambar and Belmakor. Then, after my suicidal impulses had lessened to some degree, they unchained me – not that it particularly meant anything. I seem to remember sitting and staring at the floor for days on end with no real awareness of the passage of time.

Since the presence of Beldaran seemed to calm me, my brothers frequently brought her to my tower and even allowed me to hold her. I think it was probably Beldaran who finally brought me back from the brink of total madness. How I loved that baby girl!

Beldin and the twins did not bring Polgara to me, however. Those icy grey eyes of hers cut large holes in my soul, and Polgara’s eyes would turn from deep blue to steel grey at the very mention of my name. There was no hint of forgiveness in Pol’s nature whatsoever.

Beldin had shrewdly watched my slow ascent from the pit of madness, and I think it was late summer or early autumn when he finally broached a subject of some delicacy. ‘Did you want to see the grave?’ he asked me. ‘I hear that sometimes people do.’

I understand the theory, of course. A grave’s a place to visit and to decorate with flowers. It’s supposed to help the bereaved put things into perspective. Maybe it works that way for some people, but it didn’t for me. Just the word brought my sense of loss crashing down around my ears all over again.

When I crept back toward sanity once more, it was midwinter and I was chained to the bed again.

I knew that setting all this down was going to be a mistake.

I more or less returned to sanity again by the time winter was winding down, and after the twins had questioned me rather closely, they unchained me and let me move around. Beldin never mentioned that ‘grave’ again.

I took to walking vigorously through the slushy snow that covered the Vale. I walked fast because I wanted to be exhausted by nightfall. I made sure that I was too tired to dream. The only trouble with that plan lay in the fact that everything in the Vale aroused memories of Poledra. Have you any idea how many snowy owls there are in this world?

I think I probably came to a decision during that soggy tail-end of winter. I wasn’t fully aware of it, but it was there all the same.

In furtherance of that decision, I began to put my affairs in order. On one raw, blustery evening I went to Beldin’s tower to look in on my daughters. They were just over a year old by then, so they were walking – sort of. Beldin had prudently gated the top of his stairs to prevent accidents. Beldaran had discovered how much fun it was to run, although she fell down a lot. For some reason that struck her as hilarious, and she’d always squeal with delighted laughter when it happened.

Polgara, of course, never laughed. She still doesn’t very often. Sometimes I think Polgara takes life a little too seriously.

Beldaran ran to me with her arms outstretched, and I swept her up and kissed her.

Polgara wouldn’t even look at me, but concentrated instead on one of her toys, a curiously gnarled and twisted stick – or perhaps it was the root of some tree or bush. My eldest daughter was frowning as she turned it over and over in her little hands.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Beldin apologized when he saw me looking at the peculiar toy. ‘Pol’s got a very penetrating voice, and she doesn’t bother to cry when she’s unhappy about something. She screams instead. I had to give her something to keep her mind occupied.’

‘A stick?’ I asked.

‘She’s been working on it for six months now. Every time she starts screaming, I give it to her, and it shuts her up immediately.’

‘A stick?’

He threw a quick look at Polgara and then leaned toward me to whisper, ‘It’s only got one end. She still hasn’t figured that out. She keeps trying to find the other end. The twins think I’m being cruel, but at least now I can get some sleep.’

I kissed Beldaran again, set her down, went over to Polgara, and picked her up. She stiffened up immediately and started trying to wriggle out of my hands. ‘Stop that,’ I told her. ‘You may not care much for the idea, Pol, but I’m your father, and you’re stuck with me.’ Then I quite deliberately kissed her. Those steely eyes softened for just a moment, and they were suddenly the deepest blue I’ve ever seen. Then they flashed back to grey, and she hit me on the side of the head with her stick. ‘Spirited, isn’t she?’ I observed to Beldin. Then I set her down, turned her around, and gave her a little spank on the bottom. ‘Mind your manners, Miss,’ I told her.

She turned and glared at me.

‘Be well, Polgara,’ I said. ‘Now go play.’

That was the first time I ever kissed her, and it was a long time before I did it again.

Spring came grudgingly that year, spattering us with frequent rain-showers and an occasional snow-squall, but things eventually began to dry out, and the trees and bushes started tentatively to bud.

It was on a cloudy, blustery spring day when I climbed a hill on the western edge of the Vale. The air was cool, and the clouds roiled titanic overhead. It was a day very much like that day when I’d decided to leave the village of Gara. There’s something about a cloudy, windy spring day that always stirs a wanderlust in me. I sat there for a long time, and that unrealized decision I’d made toward the end of winter finally came home to roost. Much as I loved the Vale, there were far too many painful memories here. I knew that Beldin and the twins would care for my daughters, and Poledra was gone, and my Master was gone, so there was nothing really holding me here.

I looked down into the Vale, where our towers looked like so many carelessly dropped toys and where the herds of browsing deer looked like ants. Even the ancient tree at the center of the Vale was reduced by distance. I knew that I’d miss that tree, but it had always been there, so it probably still would be when I came back – if I ever did come back.

Then I rose to my feet, sighed, and turned my back on the only place I’d ever really called home.

I skirted the eastern edge of Ulgoland. I hadn’t exercised my gift since that dreadful day, and I wasn’t really sure if I still could. Grul had probably healed by now, and I was fairly sure that he’d be nursing a grudge – and that he wouldn’t let me get close enough to knife him again. It would have been terribly embarrassing to try to gather my Will only to discover that it just wasn’t there anymore. There were also Hrulgin, Algroths, and an occasional Troll up in those mountains, so prudence suggested that I go around them.

My brothers tried to make contact with me, of course. I dimly heard their voices calling me from time to time, but I didn’t bother to answer. It would just have been a waste of time and effort. I wasn’t going back, no matter what they said to me.

I went up through western Algaria and didn’t encounter anyone. When I judged that I was well past the northern edge of Ulgoland, I turned westward, crossed the mountains, and came down onto the plains around Muros.

There was a sleepy little village of Wacite Arends where Muros now stands, and I stopped there for supplies. Since I didn’t have any money with me, I reverted to the shady practices of my youth and stole what I needed.

Then I went down-river, ultimately ending up in Camaar. Like all seaports, there was a certain cosmopolitanism about Camaar. The city was nominally subject to the Duke of Vo Wacune, but the waterfront dives I frequented had as many Alorns and Tolnedrans and even Nyissans in them as they did Wacites. The locals were mostly sailors, and sailors out on the town after a long voyage are a good-natured and generous lot, so it wasn’t all that hard to find people willing to stand me to a few tankards of ale.

As is usually the case in a pre-literate society, the fellows in the taverns loved to listen to stories, and I could make up stories with the best. And that was how I made my way in Camaar. I’ve done that fairly frequently over the years. It’s an easy way to make a living, and you can usually do it sitting down, which was a good thing in this case, since most of the time I was in no condition to stand. To put it quite bluntly, I became a common drunkard. I apparently also became a public nuisance, since I seem to remember being thrown out of any number of low waterfront dives, places that are notoriously tolerant of little social gaffes.

I really couldn’t tell you how long I stayed in Camaar – two years at least, and possibly more. I drank myself into insensibility each night, and I never knew where I’d wake up in the morning. Usually it was in a gutter or some smelly back-alley. People are not particularly interested in listening to stories first thing in the morning, so I took up begging on street-corners as a sideline. I became fairly proficient at it – proficient enough at any rate to be roaring drunk by noon every day.

I started seeing things that weren’t there and hearing voices nobody else could hear. My hands shook violently all the time, and I frequently woke up with the horrors.

But I didn’t dream, and I had no memories of anything that had happened more than a few days ago. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was happy, but at least I wasn’t suffering.

Then one night while I was comfortably sleeping in my favorite gutter, I did have a dream. My Master probably had to shout to cut through my drunken stupor, but he finally managed to get my attention.

When I woke up, there was no question in my mind at all that I’d been visited. I hadn’t had a real dream for years. Not only that, I was stone cold sober, and I wasn’t even shaking. What really persuaded me, though, was the fact that the heavenly perfume wafting from the tavern I’d probably been thrown out of the previous evening turned my stomach inside out right there on the spot. I amused myself by kneeling over my gutter and vomiting for a half-hour or so, much to the disgust of everyone who happened by. I soon discovered that it wasn’t so much the stink of that tavern that set my stomach all a-churn, but the stale, sour reek exuding from the rags I wore and from my very skin. Then, still weakly retching, I lurched to my feet, stumbled out onto a wharf, and threw myself into the bay with the rest of the garbage.

No, I wasn’t trying to drown myself. I was trying to wash off that dreadful smell. When I came out of the water, I reeked of dead fish and the various nasty things that people dump into a harbor – usually when nobody’s watching – but it was a definite improvement.

I stood on the wharf for a time, shivering violently and dripping like a down-spout, and I made up my mind to leave Camaar that very day. My Master obviously disapproved of my behavior, and the next time I weakened, he’d probably arrange to have me vomit up my shoe-soles. Fear isn’t the best motivation for embarking on a life of sobriety, but it gets your attention. The taverns of Camaar were too close at hand, and I knew most of the tavern-keepers by name, so I decided to go down into Arendia to avoid temptation.

I stumbled through the streets of the better parts of town, offending the residents mightily, I’m sure, and along about noon I reached the upstream edge of the city. I didn’t have any money to pay a ferryman, so I swam across the Camaar River to the Arendish side. It took me a couple of hours, but I wasn’t really in any hurry. The river was bank-full of fresh, running water, and it washed off a multitude of sins.

I walked back to the ferry-landing to ask a few questions. There was a rude hut on the riverbank, and the fellow who lived there was sitting on a tree-stump at the water’s edge with a fishing-pole in his hands. ‘An’ would y’ be wantin’ t’ cross over t’ Camaar, friend?’ he asked in that brogue that immediately identified him as a Wacite peasant.

‘No, thanks,’ I replied. ‘I just came from there.’

‘Yer a wee bit on the damp side. Surely y’ didn’t swim across?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘I had a small boat. It overturned on me while I was trying to beach it. What part of Arendia have I landed in? I lost my bearings while I was crossing the river.’

‘Ah, it’s a lucky one y’ are t’ have come ashore here instead of a few miles down-river. Yer in the lands of His Grace, the Duke of Vo Wacune. Off t’ the west be the lands of the Duke of Vo Astur. I shouldn’t say it – them bein’ our allies and all – but the Asturians are a hard an’ treacherous people.’

‘Allies?’

‘In our war with the murderin’ Mimbrates, don’t y’ know.’

‘Is that still going on?’

‘Ah, t’ be sure. The Duke of Vo Mimbre fancies himself King of all Arendia, but our Duke an’ th’ Duke of the Asturians ain’t about t’ bend no knees t’ him.’ He squinted at me. ‘If y’ don’t mind me sayin’ it, yer lookin’ a bit seedy.’

‘I’ve been sick for a while.’

He started back from me. ‘It ain’t catchin’, is it?’

‘No. I got a bad cut, and it didn’t heal right.’

‘That’s a relief. We’ve already got enough trouble on this side o’ the river without some traveler bringin’ in a pestilence, don’t y’ know.’

‘Which way do I go to hit the road to Vo Wacune?’

‘Back up the river a few miles. There’s another ferry-landin’ right where the road starts. Y’ can’t miss it.’ He squinted at me again. ‘Would y’ be after wantin’ a drop or two of somethin’ t’ brace y’ up fer yer journey? Tis a cruel long way t’ walk, don’t y’ know, and y’ll find me prices t’ be the most reasonable on this side o’ the river.’

‘No thanks, friend. My stomach’s a little delicate. The illness, you understand.’

“Tis a shame. Y’ look t’ be a jolly sort, an’ I wouldn’t mind the company, don’t y’ know.’

A jolly sort? Me? This fellow really wanted to sell me some beer. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m not getting any closer to Vo Wacune just standing here. Thanks for the information, friend, and good luck with your fishing.’ I turned and went back up the river.

By the time I reached Vo Wacune, I’d more or less shaken off the lingering after-effects of my years in Camaar, and I was starting to think coherently again. The first order of business was to find some decent clothing to replace the rags I was wearing and a bit of money to get me by. I suppose I could have stolen what I needed, but my Master might not have cared for that, so I decided to behave myself. The solution to my little problem lay no further away than the nearest temple of Chaldan, Bull-God of the Arends. I was something of a celebrity in those days, after all.

I can’t say that I really blame the priests of Chaldan for not believing me when I announced my name to them. In their eyes I was probably just another ragged beggar. Their lofty, disdainful attitude irritated me, though, and without even thinking about it, I gave them a small demonstration of the sort of things I was capable of, just to prove that I was really who I’d told them I was. Actually, I was almost as surprised as they were when it really worked, but neither my madness nor the years of concentrated dissipation in Camaar had eroded my talent.

The priests fell all over themselves apologizing, and they pressed new clothing and a well-filled purse on me by way of recompense for their failure to take me at my word. I accepted their gifts graciously, though I realized that I didn’t really need them now that I knew that my ‘talent’ hadn’t deserted me. I could have spun clothes out of air and turned pebbles into coins if I’d really wanted to. I bathed, trimmed my shaggy beard, and put on my new clothes. I felt much better, actually.

What I needed more than clothes or money or tidying up was information. I’d been sorely out of touch with things during my stay in Camaar, and I was hungry for news. I was surprised to find that our little adventure in Mallorea was now common knowledge here in Arendia, and the priests of the Bull-God assured me that the story was well-known in Tolnedra, and had even penetrated into Nyissa and Maragor. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, now that I think about it. My Master had met with his brothers in their cave, and their decision to leave had been largely based on our recovery of the Orb. Since this was undoubtedly the most stupendous event since the cracking of the world, the other Gods would certainly have passed it on to their priests before they departed.

The story had been greatly embellished, of course. Any time there’s a miracle involved, you can trust a priest to get creative. Since their enhancement of the bare bones of the story elevated me to near-Godhood, I decided not to correct them. A reputation of that kind can be useful now and then. The white robe the priests had given me to replace the dirty rags I’d been wearing gave me a dramatic appearance, and I cut myself a long staff to fill out the characterization. I didn’t plan to stay in Vo Wacune, and if I wanted the cooperation of the priesthood in the various towns I’d pass through, I was going to have to dress the part of a mighty sorcerer. It was pure charlatanism, of course, but it avoided arguments and long explanations.

I spent a month or so in the temple of Chaldan in Vo Wacune, and then I hiked to Vo Astur to see what the Asturians were up to – no good, as it turned out, but this was Arendia, after all. The Asturians held the balance of power during the long, mournful years of the Arendish civil wars, and they’d change sides at the drop of a hat.

Frankly, the Arendish civil wars bored me. I wasn’t interested in the spurious grievances the Arends were constantly inventing to justify atrocities they were going to commit anyway. I went to Asturia because Asturia had a sea-coast and Wacune didn’t. The last thing I’d done before I left Cherek and his sons had been to break the Kingdom of Aloria all to pieces, and I was moderately curious about how it was working out.

Vo Astur was situated on the south bank of the Astur River, and Alorn ships frequently sailed up-river to call there. I stopped by the temple, and the priests directed me to several riverfront taverns where I might reasonably expect to find Alorn sailors. I wasn’t happy about the prospect of testing my will-power in a tavern, but there was no help for it. If you want to talk to an Alorn, you’re going to have to go where the beer is.

As luck had it, I came across a burly Alorn sea-captain in the second tavern I visited. His name was Haknar, and he’d sailed down to Arendia from Val Alorn. I introduced myself, and the white robe and staff helped to convince him that I was telling the truth. He offered to buy me a tankard or six of Arendish ale, but I politely declined. I didn’t want to get started on that again. ‘How are the boats working out?’ I asked him.

‘Ships,’ he corrected. Sailors always make that distinction. ‘They’re fast,’ he conceded, ‘but you have to pay close attention to what you’re doing when the wind comes up. King Cherek told me that you designed them.’

‘I had a little help,’ I replied modestly. ‘Aldur gave me the basic plan. How is Cherek?’

‘A little mournful, really. I think he misses his sons.’

‘It couldn’t be helped. We had to protect the Orb. How are the boys doing in their new kingdoms?’

‘They’re getting by, I guess. I think you rushed them, Belgarath. They were a little young when you sent them off into the wilderness like that. Dras calls his kingdom Drasnia, and he’s starting to build a city at a place he calls Boktor. I think he misses Val Alorn. Algar calls his kingdom Algaria, and he isn’t building cities. He’s got his people rounding up horses and cattle instead.’

I nodded. Algar probably wouldn’t have been interested in cities. ‘What’s Riva doing?’ I asked.

‘He’s definitely building a city. The word “fort” would probably come closer, though. Have you ever been to the Isle of the Winds?’

‘Once,’ I said.

‘Then you know where the beach is. That valley that runs down out of the mountains sort of stair-steps its way down to the beach. Riva had his people build stone walls across the front of each step. Now he’s got them building their houses up against the backs of those walls. If somebody tried to attack the place, he’d have to fight his way over a dozen of those walls. That could get very expensive. I stopped by the Isle on my way here. They’re making good progress.’

‘Has Riva started building his citadel yet?’

‘He’s got it laid out, but he wants to get his houses built first. You know how Riva is. He’s awfully young, but he does look out for his people.’

‘He’ll make a good king, then.’

‘Probably so. His subjects are a little worried, though. They really want him to get married, but he keeps putting them off. He seems to have somebody special in mind.’

‘He does. He dreamed about her once.’

‘You can’t marry a dream, Belgarath. The Rivan throne has to have an heir, and that’s something a man can’t do all by himself.’

‘He’s still young, Haknar. Sooner or later some girl’s going to take his eye. If it starts to look like it’s going to be a problem, I’ll go to the Isle and have a talk with him. Is Cherek still calling what’s left of his kingdom Aloria?’

‘No. Aloria’s gone now. That took a lot of the heart out of Bear-shoulders. He hasn’t even gotten around to putting a name to that peninsula you left him. The rest of us just call it “Cherek” and let it go at that. That’s whenever he lets us come home. We spend a lot of time at sea patrolling the Sea of the Winds. Cherek’s very free with titles of nobility, but there’s a large fishhook attached to them. I was about half-drunk when he made me Baron Haknar. It wasn’t until I sobered up that I realized that I’d volunteered to spend three months out of every year for the rest of my life sailing around in circles up in the Sea of the Winds. It’s really unpleasant up there, Belgarath – particularly in the winter. I get ice a half-foot thick on my sails every night. My deck-hands talk about the “Haknar jig”. That’s when the morning breeze shakes the ice off the sails and drops it down on the deck. My sailors have to dance out of the way or get brained. Are you sure I can’t offer you something to drink?’

‘Thanks all the same, Haknar, but I think I’d better be moving on. Vo Astur depresses me. You can’t get an Asturian to talk about anything but politics.’

‘Politics?’ Haknar laughed. ‘The only thing I’ve ever heard an Asturian talk about is who he’s going to go to war with next week.’

‘That’s what passes for politics here in Asturia,’ I told him, rising to my feet. ‘Give my best to Cherek the next time you see him. Tell him that I’m still keeping an eye on things.’

‘I’m sure that’ll make him sleep better at night. Are you coming to Val Alorn for the wedding?’

‘What wedding?’

‘Cherek’s. His wife died while he was off in Mallorea. Since you stole all his sons, he’s going to need a new heir. His bride-to-be is a real beauty – about fifteen or so. She’s pretty, but she’s not really very bright. If you say “good morning” to her, it takes her ten minutes to think up an answer.’

I felt a sudden wrench. I wasn’t the only one who’d lost a wife. ‘Give him my apologies,’ I told Haknar shortly. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to make it. I’d better be going now. Thanks for the information.’

‘Glad to be of help, Belgarath.’ Then he turned and bellowed, ‘Innkeeper! More ale!’

I went back out into the street and walked slowly back toward the temple of Chaldan, being careful not to think about Cherek’s bereavement. I had my own, and that filled my mind. I didn’t really want to dwell on it, since there was nobody around to chain me to a bed.

I’d received a few tentative invitations to visit the Duke in his palace, but I’d put them off with assorted vague excuses. I hadn’t visited the Duke of Vo Wacune, and I definitely didn’t want to show any favoritism. Given my probably undeserved celebrity, I decided not to have anything to do with any of those three contending Dukes. I had no desire to get involved in the Arendish civil wars – not even by implication.

That might have been a mistake. I could probably have saved Arendia several eons of suffering if I’d just called those three imbeciles together and rammed a peace-treaty down their throats. Considering the nature of Arends, however, they’d more than likely have violated the treaty before the ink was dry.

Anyway, I’d found out what I needed to know in Vo Astur, and the invitations from the Ducal Palace were becoming more and more insistent, so I thanked the priests for their hospitality and left town before daybreak the following morning. I’ve been leaving town before daybreak for longer than I care to think about.

I was almost certain that the Duke of Vo Astur would take my departure as a personal affront, so when I was a mile or so south of town, I went back into the woods a ways and took the form of the wolf.

Yes, it was painful. I wasn’t even certain that I could bring myself to do it, but it was time to find out. I’d been doing a number of things lately that pushed at the edges of my pain. I was not going to live out my life as an emotional cripple. Poledra wouldn’t have wanted that, and if I went mad, so what? One more mad wolf in the Arendish forest wouldn’t have made that much difference.

My assessment of the Duke of Vo Astur turned out to be quite accurate. I was ghosting southward along the edge of the woods about an hour later when a group of armed horsemen came pounding along that twisting road. The Asturian Duke really wanted me to pay him a visit. I drifted back in under the trees, dropped to my haunches, and watched the Duke’s men ride by. Arends were a much shorter people in those days than they are now, so they didn’t look too ridiculous on those stunted horses.

I traveled down through the forest and ultimately reached the plains of Mimbre. Unlike the Wacites and the Asturians, the Mimbrates had cleared away the woods of their domain almost completely. Mimbrate horses were larger than those of their northern cousins, and the nobles of that southern Duchy had already begun to develop the armor that characterizes them today. A mounted knight needs open ground to work on, so the trees had to go. The open farmland that resulted was rather peripheral to Mimbrate thinking.

When we think of the Arendish civil wars, we normally think of the three contending Duchies, but that wasn’t the full extent of it. Lesser nobles also had their little entertainments, and there was hardly a district in all of Mimbre that didn’t have its own ongoing feuds. I’d resumed my own form, although I’ll admit that I gave some serious consideration to living out the rest of my life as a wolf, and I was going south toward Vo Mimbre when I came across one of those feuds in full flower.

Unfortunately, the dim-witted Arends absolutely loved the idea of siege-engines. Arends have a formal turn of mind, and the prospect of a decades-long stand-off appeals to them enormously. The besiegers could set up camp around the walls of a fortress and mindlessly throw boulders at the walls for years, while the besieged could spend those same years happily piling rocks against the inside of those walls. Stalemates get boring after a while, though, and every so often, somebody felt the need to commit a few atrocities to offend his opponent.

In this particular case, the besieging baron decided to round up all the local serfs and behead them in plain view of the defender’s castle.

That’s when I took a hand in the game. As it happened, I was standing on a hilltop, and I posed dramatically there with my staff outstretched. ‘Stop!’ I roared, enhancing my voice to such an extent that they probably heard me in Nyissa. The baron and his knights wheeled to gape; the knight who was preparing to chop off a serf’s head paused momentarily to look at me, and then he raised his sword again.

He dropped it the next instant, however. It’s a little hard to hold on to a sword when the hilt turns white-hot in your hands. He danced around, howling and blowing on his burned fingers.

I descended the hill and confronted the murderous Mimbrate baron. ‘You will not perpetrate this outrage!’ I told him.

‘What I do is none of thy concern, old man,’ he replied, but he didn’t really sound very sure of himself.

‘I’m making it my concern! If you even attempt to harm these people, I’ll tear out your heart!’

‘Kill this old fool,’ the baron told one of his knights.

The knight dutifully reached for his sword, but I gathered my Will, leveled my staff, and said, ‘Swine.’

The knight immediately turned into a pig.

‘Sorcery!’ the baron gasped.

‘Precisely. Now pack up your people and go home – and turn those serfs loose.’

‘My cause is just,’ he asserted.

‘Your methods aren’t. Now get out of my sight, or you’ll grow a snout and a curly tail right where you stand.’

‘The practice of sorcery is forbidden in the realm of the Duke of Vo Mimbre,’ he told me – as if it made any difference.

‘Oh, really? How are you going to stop me?’ I pointed my staff at a nearby tree-stump and exploded it into splinters. ‘You’re pressing your luck, my Lord Baron. That could just as easily have been you. I told you to get out of my sight. Now do it before I lose my temper.’

‘Thou wilt regret this, Sorcerer.’

‘Not as much as you will if you don’t start moving right now.’ I gestured at the knight I’d just converted into ambulatory bacon, and he returned to his own form. His eyes were bulging with horror. He took one look at me and fled screaming.

The stubborn baron started to say something, but he evidently changed his mind. He ordered his men to mount up and then sullenly led them off toward the south.

‘You can go back to your homes,’ I told the serfs. Then I went back up to my hilltop to watch and to make sure that the baron didn’t try to circle back on me.

I suppose I could have done it differently. There hadn’t really been any need for that direct confrontation. I could have driven the baron and his knights off without ever revealing myself, but I’d lost my temper. I get into trouble that way fairly often.

Anyway, two days later I began to see lurid descriptions of a ‘foul sorcerer’ nailed to almost every tree I passed. The descriptions of me were fairly accurate, but the reward offered for my capture was insultingly small.

I decided at that point to go directly on to Tolnedra. I was certain that I could deal with any repercussions resulting from my display of bad temper, but why bother? Arendia was starting to bore me anyway, and I’ve been chased out of a lot of places in my time, so one more wasn’t going to make that much difference.