Читать книгу Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress: 2-Book Collection - David Eddings - Страница 35

Things might have gone a little better if we’d been able to start out immediately, but it was still winter, and I had no intention of dragging my daughters out in bad weather. Beldaran put the time to good use sewing on her wedding gown. Polgara, however, took up residence in the tree again, and she steadfastly refused even to talk to us.

It was about a month after I’d made the decision when Riva’s cousin Anrak showed up in the Vale with another Alorn. ‘Ho, Belgarath!’ the boisterous Anrak greeted me. ‘Why are you still here?’

‘Because it’s still winter.’

‘Oh, it’s not all that bad. Riva’s getting impatient to meet the girl he’s going to marry.’

‘How did he find out about it?’

‘He had another one of those dreams.’

‘Oh. Who’s your friend?’

‘His name’s Gelheim. He’s a sort of an artist. Riva wants a picture of his bride.’

‘He knows what she looks like. He’s been dreaming about her for the last fifteen years.’

Anrak shrugged. ‘He just wants to be sure you’ve picked the right one, I guess.’

‘I don’t think Belar and Aldur would have let me make a mistake, do you?’

‘You never know. Sometimes the Gods are a little strange. Have you got anything to drink?’

‘I’ll introduce you to the twins. They make fairly good beer. They’re Alorns, so they know how it’s done.’

Beldaran and Anrak hit it off immediately, but Polgara was a different matter. It started out innocently enough one morning when Anrak came by just after breakfast. ‘I thought you had two daughters,’ Riva’s cousin said to me.

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Polgara’s a little unhappy with me right now. She’s living in a tree.’

‘It doesn’t sound to me as if she’s quite right in the head. Does she look like her sister?’

‘Not too much, no.’

‘I thought they were twins.’

‘That doesn’t always mean that they look alike.’

‘Where’s this tree of hers?’

‘Down in the center of the Vale.’

‘I think I’ll go down and have a look at her. If Riva’s going to get married, maybe I should, too.’

Beldaran giggled.

‘What’s so funny, Pretty?’ he asked her. It was his favorite nickname for her.

‘I don’t think my sister’s the marrying kind, Anrak. You can suggest it to her, if you’d like, but leave yourself plenty of running room when you do.’

‘Oh, she can’t be that bad.’

Beldaran concealed a smirk and gave him directions to the tree.

His eyes still looked a bit startled when he came back to the tower. ‘Unfriendly, isn’t she?’ he noted mildly. ‘Is she always that dirty?’

‘My sister doesn’t believe in bathing,’ Beldaran replied.

‘She doesn’t particularly believe in good manners, either. I could probably clean her up, but that mouth of hers might cause some problems. I’m not even sure what some of those words mean.’

‘What did you say to her to set her off?’ Beldaran asked him.

‘I was honest,’ Anrak replied with a shrug. ‘I told her that Riva and I usually did things together, and that as long as he was going to get married, I might as well, too – and since she wasn’t attached …’ He scratched at his beard. ‘That’s about as far as I got, actually.’ He looked slightly injured. ‘I’m not used to having people laugh at me. It was a perfectly honorable suggestion. It wasn’t as if I’d made an improper proposal.’ He went across the room to look into Beldaran’s mirror. ‘Is there something the matter with my beard?’ he asked. ‘It looks all right to me.’

‘Polgara’s not particularly partial to beards, Anrak,’ I explained.

‘She didn’t have to be so insulting though, did she? Do I really look like a rat hiding in a clump of bushes?’

‘Polgara exaggerates sometimes,’ Beldaran told him. ‘She takes a little getting used to.’

‘I don’t think it’d work out,’ he decided. ‘I’m not trying to insult you, Belgarath, but you left a lot of the bark on that one when you were raising her. If I decide that I really want to get married, I think I’ll choose a nice Alorn girl. Sorcerese girls are a little too complicated for me.’

‘Sorcerese?’

‘Isn’t that what your race is called?’

‘It’s a profession, Anrak, not a race.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’

Gelheim drew several pictures of Beldaran, and then he left. ‘Tell Riva that we’ll be along in the spring,’ Anrak told him.

Gelheim nodded, then started out through the dreary tag-end of winter. He was almost as close-mouthed as Algar was.

Anrak spent much of his time at the twins’ tower, but he came by one day to tell me about Riva’s progress on the hall he was building at the upper end of the city. ‘Actually, it’s a little showy for my taste,’ he said somewhat critically, ‘not that it’s got all that many frills or anything, but it’s awfully big. I didn’t think Riva was that full of himself.’

‘He’s following instructions,’ I explained. ‘The Hall of the Rivan King is there to protect the Orb, not the people who live inside. We definitely don’t want Torak to get his hands on it again.’

‘There isn’t much danger of that, Belgarath. He’d have to get past Dras and Algar first, and Bear-shoulders has a fleet of war-boats patrolling the Sea of the Winds. One-eye might start out with a big army, but there wouldn’t be very many of them left by the time they reached the Isle.’

‘It doesn’t hurt to take a few extra precautions.’

The weather finally broke about a month later, and we started making preparations for the trip.

‘Are we almost ready to leave?’ Beldaran asked one fine spring afternoon.

‘I don’t think we need to bring the furniture,’ Beldin said a bit sourly. Beldin believed in traveling light.

‘I’ll go get Polgara, then,’ she said.

‘She won’t come, Beldaran,’ I said.

‘Oh, she’ll come, all right.’ There was an uncharacteristic hint of steel in my younger daughter’s voice.

‘She doesn’t approve of this wedding, you know.’

‘That’s her problem. She is going to attend, whether she likes it or not,’ It was easy to underestimate Beldaran because of her sweet, sunny disposition. She rarely asserted any kind of authority, largely because she didn’t have to. We all loved her so much that she usually got what she wanted without making any fuss about it. When one of us crossed her, however, she could be very firm. She’d been a bit disappointed that the twins wouldn’t be going with us, but somebody had to stay in the Vale, and the twins weren’t really comfortable in the presence of strangers.

I think I’d have given a great deal to have heard the conversation between my daughters when Beldaran went to the tree to fetch Pol. Neither of them would talk about it afterward. But though Polgara was a bit sullen, she did come with us.

We skirted the eastern border of Ulgoland, of course, but that was standard practice in those days. Beldin scouted ahead. We weren’t really expecting any trouble, but Beldin never missed an opportunity to fly.

I wonder how he and Vella are getting along. She doesn’t have her daggers any more, but I’d imagine that her beak and talons sort of make up for that.

The weather was particularly fine that year, and the snow had largely melted in the passes through the Sendarian Mountains. When we reached Muros, Anrak went on ahead. ‘Riva’s instructions,’ he explained. ‘As soon as I get to the coast, I’m supposed to send word to him. He’ll bring a ship and meet us in Camaar.’

‘Do we really think it’s safe to take father back to Camaar?’ Polgara said with just a hint of spitefulness. But both the girls were a little nervous in Muros. Sometimes I forgot about the fact that they’d never been out of the Vale before, and strangers made them uncomfortable. Muros wasn’t much of a town in those days, but it still had more people in it than my daughters were used to.

We hired a carriage there and rode down-river in style. When we reached Camaar, I did not revisit the waterfront. We took lodgings in one of the better inns in the main part of town, and I let Beldin go find Anrak.

‘Riva’s on the way,’ Anrak assured us when Beldin brought him to our inn. ‘He’s probably crowded on several acres of sail. He really wants to meet you, Pretty.’

Beldaran blushed.

‘Disgusting,’ Polgara muttered. I knew that this was all going to come to a head eventually. Polgara’s discontent about her sister’s impending wedding was probably quite natural. There were ties between my daughters that I couldn’t even begin to understand. Polgara seemed to be the dominant twin, but she was the one who automatically spoke in plurals – which is usually the sign of the submissive sister. To this very day, if you’re impolite enough to ask Polgara how old she is, she’ll probably say something like, ‘We’re about three thousand – or so.’ Beldaran’s been gone for a long time, but she still looms very large in Polgara’s conception of the world.

I think that someday I’ll have a long talk with Pol about that. The world-view of someone who’s never really been alone might be very interesting.

And then Riva arrived in Camaar. I’m sure that the citizens noticed him. It wasn’t so much the fact that he was seven feet tall that got their attention. I think it might have had something to do with the way he tried to walk straight through anything or anyone standing between him and Beldaran. I’ve seen people who were in love before, but nobody has ever taken it to such extremes as Riva did.

When he came into the room at the inn – Beldin was quick enough to get the door open for him before he walked right through it – he took one look at my blonde daughter, and that was it for him.

Beldaran had been practicing a pretty little speech, but when she saw Riva’s face, she lost it entirely.

They didn’t say anything to each other! Have you ever spent an entire afternoon in the room with two people who don’t talk at all, but just sit gazing into each other’s faces?

It finally got to the point that it was embarrassing, so I spent the afternoon looking at Polgara instead. Now, there was a study for you. There was so much naked emotion in that room that the air almost seemed to crackle with it. At first Polgara looked at Iron-grip with open and undisguised hostility. Here was her rival, and she absolutely hated him. Gradually, however, the sheer force of the absolute adoration with which Riva and Beldaran gazed at each other began to impress itself upon her. Polgara can keep her emotions from showing on her face, but she can’t control her eyes. I watched those glorious eyes of hers flicker back and forth from steely grey to deepest lavender as her conflicting emotions struggled within her. It took her a long time. Polgara isn’t one to give up easily. Finally, however, she sighed a long, quavering sigh, and two great tears welled up in those eyes. She quite obviously realized that she had lost. There was no way she could compete with the love between her sister and the Rivan King.

I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for her at that point, so I went over to where she was sitting and took her dirty hand in mine. ‘Why don’t we step outside, Pol?’ I suggested gently. ‘Get a bit of air?’

She gave me a quick, grateful look, nodded mutely, and rose to her feet. We left the room with dignity.

There was a balcony at the end of the hallway outside the room, and we went there. ‘Well,’ she said in an almost neutral tone of voice, ‘I guess that settles that, doesn’t it?’

‘It was settled a long time ago, Pol,’ I told her. ‘This is one of those Necessities. It has to happen.’

‘It always comes back to that, doesn’t it, father?’

‘Necessity? Of course, Pol. It has to do with who we are.’

‘Does it ever get any easier?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

‘Well, I just hope that they’ll be happy.’ I was so proud of her at that moment that my heart almost burst.

Then she suddenly turned to me. ‘Oh, father!’ she cried with a broken-hearted wail. She clung to me in a sudden storm of weeping.

I held her, saying, ‘There, there.’ That’s one of the stupidest things a man can possibly say, but under the circumstances, it was the best I could manage.

In time she got it under control, and she sniffed, a particularly unlovely sound.

‘Use your handkerchief,’ I told her.

‘I forgot to bring one.’

I made one for her – right there on the spot – and offered it to her.

‘Thank you.’ She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Is there a bathhouse in this place?’ she asked then.

‘I think so. I’ll ask the innkeeper.’

‘I’d appreciate it. I think it’s time I got cleaned up. I don’t really have any reason to be dirty any more, do I?’

Somehow that one escaped me.

‘Why don’t you go out and buy me a decent dress, father?’ she suggested then.

‘Of course, Pol. Anything else?’

‘A comb and brush, perhaps.’ She took hold of one tangled lock, pulled it forward, and looked at it critically. ‘I suppose I really ought to do something about my hair, too.’

‘I’ll see what I can find. Would you like a ribbon as well?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, father. I’m not a maypole. I don’t need decorations. Go talk to the innkeeper. I really want to take a bath. Oh, incidentally, just a plain dress. This is Beldaran’s party, not mine. I’ll be in my room.’ And she went off down the hallway.

I located the bathhouse for her, and then I went looking for Anrak. I found him and Beldin in the taproom on the main floor of the inn. ‘Go find me a dressmaker,’ I told him.

‘A what?’

‘Polgara wants a new dress.’

‘What’s wrong with the one she’s got?’

‘Just do it, Anrak, don’t argue with me. Oh, she wants a comb and brush, too. The dressmaker should be able to tell you where to find them.’

He looked mournfully into his half-full tankard.

‘Now, Anrak.’

He sighed and went on out.

‘What’s this all about?’ Beldin asked me.

‘Polgara’s had a change of heart. She doesn’t want to look like an abandoned bird’s nest any more.’

‘What brought that on?’

‘I haven’t got any idea, and I’m not going to ask. If she wants to look like a girl instead of a haystack, that’s up to her.’

‘You’re in a peculiar humor.’

‘I know.’ Then I jumped into the air and crowed exultantly.

We were all stunned when Polgara came into the room the next morning. The plain dress she wore was blue, of course. Pol almost always wears blue. Her long, dark hair was pulled back rather severely and tied at the nape of her neck. Now that she was clean, we saw that her skin was very fair, much like her sister’s, and she was startlingly beautiful. It was her manner, however, that took us all by surprise. Even at sixteen, Pol was as regal as any queen.

Riva and Anrak both rose to their feet and bowed to her. Then Anrak sighed lustily.

‘What’s the matter?’ his cousin asked him.

‘I think I’ve made a mistake.’

‘There’s nothing new about that.’

‘I think I’m going to regret this one, though. I might have had a chance with Lady Polgara if I’d pressed the issue. The Vale’s pretty isolated, so she didn’t have any other suitors. I’m afraid it’s too late now, though. As soon as we get her to Riva, every young man on the Isle’s going to pay court to her.’

Pol gave him a warm look.

‘Why did you let her get away?’ Riva asked him.

‘You saw how she looked yesterday, didn’t you?’

‘No, not really. I had my mind on other things.’

Beldaran blushed. They’d both had their minds on other things.

‘Please don’t be offended, Lady Polgara,’ Anrak said to my eldest daughter.

‘Not at all, Anrak,’ she replied. She seemed quite taken with the idea of being called, ‘Lady Polgara.’ Just about everybody in the world calls her that now, but I think she still gets a warm glow every time she hears it.

‘Well,’ Anrak said, choosing his words carefully, ‘Lady Polgara was just a little indifferent to appearances when I first saw her. I think she’s a sorceress – like her father. Of course, he’s a sorcerer, not a sorceress, but you know what I mean. Anyway, all sorcerers are very deep, you know, and she’d probably been thinking about something for several million years, and –’

‘I’m only sixteen, Anrak,’ Pol corrected him gently.

‘Well, yes, I know, but time doesn’t mean the same thing to you people as it does to us. You can make time stop and start again any time you want, can’t you?’

‘Can we do that, father?’ she asked me with some curiosity.

‘I don’t know.’ I looked at Beldin. ‘Can we?’

‘Well, theoretically, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘Belmakor and I discussed the possibility once, but we decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea. You might get time all mixed up – one time in one place and a different time in another. It’d probably be very hard to get it all put back together right again, and you couldn’t just leave it that way.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’d be in two places at the same time.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘It’d be a paradox, Belgarath. Belmakor and I weren’t sure what that might do to the universe – rip it to pieces, maybe, or just make it vanish.’

‘It wouldn’t do that.’

‘I wasn’t going to try it to find out.’

‘You see what I mean about how deep these people are?’ Anrak said to his cousin. ‘Anyway, the Lady Polgara had flown up into a tree, and she was doing sorceress things. I sort of suggested that I might consider marrying her – since her sister was going to marry you, and twins always like to do things together. She didn’t think too much of the idea, I guess, so I didn’t press the issue. To be honest about it, she wasn’t very tidy when I first saw her.’ He stopped, looking at Pol with a certain consternation.

‘I was in disguise, Anrak,’ she helped him out.

‘Really? Why was that?’

‘It was one of those sorceress things you mentioned.’

‘Oh, one of those. It was a very good disguise, Lady Polgara. You were an absolute mess.’

‘I wouldn’t push that too much further, Anrak,’ Beldaran advised. ‘Why don’t we have some breakfast and start packing instead? I really want to see my new home.’

We set sail later on that same day, and we arrived at Riva’s city two days afterward. His people were all down at the beach waiting for us – well, for Beldaran, actually. I don’t imagine that the Rivans were very interested in looking at Beldin and me, but they really wanted to get a look at their new queen. Riva hovered protectively over her. He didn’t want anybody admiring her too much.

I’m sure they got his point – at least where Beldaran was concerned. There were other things to be admired, however.

‘You’d better get yourself a club,’ Beldin muttered to me.

‘What?’

‘A club, Belgarath – a stout stick with a big end.’

‘What do I need with a club?’

‘Use your eyes, Belgarath. Take a long, hard look at Polgara, and then look at the faces of all those young Alorns standing on the beach. Believe me, you’re going to need a club.’

I didn’t, exactly, but I made a special point of not letting Pol out of my sight while we were on the Isle of the Winds. I suspect that I might have been more comfortable if Pol had held off on emerging from her cocoon for a while. I was proud of her, of course, but her altered appearance made me very nervous. She was young and inexperienced, and the young men on the Isle were obviously very much taken with her.

My strategy was quite simple. I sat in plain view and scowled. I was wearing one of those ridiculous white robes people are always trying to foist off on me, and I carried a long staff – much as I had in Arendia and Tolnedra. I had quite a reputation among Alorns, and those absurd trappings enhanced it and got my point across. The young Rivans were polite and attentive – which was fine. But they didn’t try to lure Polgara off into dark corners – which wouldn’t have been.

Pol, of course, was having the time of her life. She didn’t exactly encourage that crowd of suitors, but she smiled a great deal and even laughed now and then. It’s a cruel thing to suggest, but I suspect that she even enjoyed the fact that young Rivan girls frequently left the room where she was holding court so that they could go someplace private. Gnawing on your own liver isn’t the sort of thing you want to do in public.

We’d been in the Hall of the Rivan King for about a week when a fleet of Cherek war-boats sailed into the harbor. The other Alorn kings had arrived for Riva’s wedding.

It was good to see Cherek and his sons again, although we didn’t really have much chance to talk. Pol assured me that she could take care of herself, but I didn’t feel like taking chances.

Yes, Polgara, I was jealous. Aren’t fathers supposed to be jealous? I knew what those young men had on their minds, and I was not going to leave you alone with them.

A couple of days after Cherek and the boys had arrived, Beldin came looking for me. I was in my usual place wearing my usual scowl, and Polgara was busy breaking hearts. ‘I think you’d better have a talk with Bear-shoulders,’ he told me.

‘Oh?’

‘Riva’s wedding’s starting to give Dras and Algar some ideas.’

‘What kind of ideas?’

‘Grow up, Belgarath. Regardless of how Riva and Beldaran feel about each other, this is a political marriage.’

‘Theological, actually.’

‘It means the same thing. Dras and Algar are starting to think about the advantages that might be involved in a marriage to Polgara.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘I’m not the one who’s thinking about it, so don’t blame me if it’s ridiculous. Sooner or later, one of them’s going to go to Cherek and ask him to speak with you about it. Then he’ll come to you with some kind of proposal. You’d better head that off before he embarrasses himself. We still need the Alorns on our side.’

I swore and stood up. ‘Can you keep an eye on Polgara for me?’

‘Why not?’

‘Watch out for that tall one with the blond hair. Pol’s paying a little too much attention to him for my comfort.’

‘I’ll take care of it.’

‘Don’t do anything permanent to him. He’s the son of a clan-chief, and this Isle’s a little too confined for a clan war.’ Then I went looking for Cherek Bear-shoulders.

I stretched the truth just a bit when I told him that Aldur had instructed me to keep Pol with me in the Vale and that she wasn’t supposed to get married for quite some time. Once I’d headed off their father, Dras and Algar could make all the proposals to him they wanted to. He wouldn’t act as their go-between.

Bear-shoulders had aged since we’d gone to Mallorea. His hair and beard were shot with grey now, and a lot of the fun seemed to have gone out of his eyes. He told me that the Nadraks had been scouting along Bull-neck’s eastern border and that the Murgos had been coming down the eastern escarpment and probing into Algaria.

‘We probably ought to discourage that,’ I told him.

‘Dras and Algar are taking care of it,’ he replied. ‘Technically speaking, there’s still a state of war between us and the Angaraks, so we could probably justify a certain amount of firmness if the issue ever came up in court.’

‘Cherek, we’re talking about international politics here. There aren’t any laws, and there aren’t any courts.’

He sighed. ‘The world’s getting more civilized all the time, Belgarath,’ he said mournfully. ‘The Tolnedrans are always trying to come up with picky little restrictions.’

‘Oh?’

‘They’ve been trying to get me to agree to outlaw what they call “piracy”. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you ever heard of? There aren’t any laws on the high seas. What happens out there isn’t anybody’s business. Why drag judges and lawyers into it?’

‘Tolnedrans are like that sometimes. Tell Dras and Algar to find wives someplace else, would you please? Polgara’s not available at the moment.’

‘I’ll mention it to them.’

The Alorn calendar was a little imprecise in those days. The Alorns kept a count of years, but they didn’t bother attaching names to the months the way the Tolnedrans did. Alorns just kept track of the seasons and let it go at that, so I can’t really give you the precise date of the wedding of Beldaran and Riva. It was three weeks or so after the arrival of Riva’s father and brothers, though. About ten days before the wedding, Polgara set aside her campaign to break every heart on the Isle of the Winds, and she and Beldaran went into an absolute frenzy of dressmaking. With the help of several good-natured Alorn girls, they rebuilt Beldaran’s wedding dress from the ground up, and then they turned their attention to a suitable gown for the bride’s sister. Beldaran had always enjoyed sewing, but Pol’s fondness for that activity dates from that period in her life. Sewing keeps a lady’s fingers busy, but it gives her plenty of time to talk. I’m not really sure what those ladies talked about during those ten days, because they always stopped whenever I entered the room. Evidently it was the sort of thing ladies prefer not to share with men. Polgara apparently gave her sister all sorts of advice about married life – although how she found out about such things is beyond me. How much information could she have picked up sitting in a tree surrounded by birds?

Anyway, the happy day finally arrived. Riva was very nervous, but Beldaran seemed serene. The ceremony took place in the Hall of the Rivan King – Riva’s throne room. A throne room probably isn’t the best place to hold a wedding, but Riva insisted, explaining that he wanted to be married in the presence of the Orb and that it might have been a little inappropriate for him to wear his sword into the temple of Belar. That was Riva for you.

There are all sorts of obscure little ceremonies involved in weddings, the meanings of which have long since been lost. The bridegroom is supposed to get there first, for example, and he’s supposed to be surrounded by burly people who are there to deal firmly with anyone who objects. Riva had plenty of those, of course. His father, his brothers, and his cousin, all in bright-burnished mail shirts, bulked large around him as he stood at the front of the hall. I’d firmly taken Bull-neck’s axe away from him and made him wear a sheathed sword instead. Dras was an enthusiast, and I didn’t want him to start chopping up wedding guests just to demonstrate how much he loved his younger brother.

Once they’d settled down and the clinking of their mail had subsided, Beldin provided a fanfare to announce the bride’s arrival. Beldin absolutely adored Beldaran, and he got a bit carried away. I’m almost positive that the citizens of Tol Honeth, hundreds of leagues to the south, paused in the business of swindling each other to remark, ‘What was that?’ when the sound of a thousand silver trumpets shattered the air of the Rivan throne room. That fanfare was followed by an inhumanly suppressed choir of female voices – a few hundred or so, I’d imagine – whispering a hymn to the bride. Beldin had studied music for a couple of quiet centuries once, and that hymn was very impressive, but eighty-four-part harmony is just a little complicated for my taste.

Armored Alorns swung the great doors of the Hall of the Rivan King open, and Beldaran, all in white, stepped into the precise center of that doorway. I knew it was the precise center because I’d measured it eight times and cut a mark into the stones of the floor that’s probably still there. Beldaran, pale as the moon, stood in that framing archway while all those Alorns turned in their seats to crane their necks and look at her.

Somewhere, a great bell began to peal. After the wedding, I went looking for that bell, but I never found it.

Then my youngest daughter was touched with a soft white light that grew more and more intense.

Polgara, wrapped in a blue velvet cloak, stepped forward to take my arm. ‘Are you doing that?’ she asked me, inclining her head toward the shaft of light illuminating her sister.

‘Not me, Pol,’ I replied. ‘I was just going to ask if you were doing it.’

‘Maybe it’s uncle Beldin.’ She slightly shrugged her shoulders, and her cloak softly fell away to reveal her gown. I almost choked when I saw it.

Beldaran was all in white, and she glowed like pale flame in that shaft of light that I’m almost certain was a wedding gift from the funny old fellow in the rickety cart. Polgara was all in blue, and her gown broke away from her shoulders in complex folds and ruffles trimmed with snowy lace. It was cut somewhat daringly for the day, leaving no question that she was a girl. That deep blue gown was almost like a breaking wave, and Polgara rose out of it like a Goddess rising from the sea.

I controlled myself as best I could. ‘Nice dress,’ I said from between clenched teeth.

‘Oh, this old thing?’ she said deprecatingly, touching one of the ruffles in an off-hand way. Then she laughed a warm, throaty laugh that was far older than her years, and she actually kissed me. She’d never willingly done that before, and it startled me so much that I barely heard the alarm bells ringing in my head.

We separated and took the glowing bride, one on either arm, and, with stately, measured pace and slow, delivered up our beloved Beldaran to the adoring King of the Isle of the Winds.

I had quite a bit on my mind at that point, so I more or less ignored the wedding sermon of the High Priest of Belar. Anyway, if you’ve heard one wedding sermon, you’ve heard them all. There came a point in the ceremony, though, when something a little out of the ordinary happened.

My Master’s Orb began to glow a deep, deep blue that almost perfectly matched the color of Polgara’s gown. We were all terribly happy that Beldaran and Riva were getting married, but it seemed to me that the Orb was far more impressed with Polgara than with her sister. I’ll take an oath that I really saw what happened next, although no one else who was there will admit that he saw it, too. That’s probably what half-persuaded me that I’d been seeing things that weren’t really there. The Orb, as I say, began to glow, but it always did that when Riva was around, so there was nothing really unusual about that.

What was unusual was the fact Polgara began to glow as well. She seemed faintly infused with that same pale blue light, but the absolutely white lock at her brow was not pale. It was an incandescent blue.

And then I seemed to hear the faint flutter of ghostly wings coming from the back of the hall. That was the part that made me question the accuracy of my own senses.

It seemed, though, that Polgara heard it, too, because she turned around. And with profoundest respect and love, she curtsied with heart-stopping grace to the misty image of the snowy white owl perched in the rafters at the back of the Hall of the Rivan King.