Polgara arrived late that same afternoon. No one saw fit to raise the question of how she had crossed the hundreds of intervening leagues in the space of hours instead of weeks.
The sentry who had been standing watch atop the battlements and who escorted her to the sickroom, however, had a slightly wild look in his eyes, as if he had just seen something about which he would prefer not to speak.
Garion, at the moment she arrived, was in the midst of a discussion with one of the court physicians about the therapeutic value of bleeding, and the conversation had reached the point where he had just picked up a sword to confront the startled medical man who was approaching the bed with lancet in hand.
"If you try to open my wife's veins with that," the young king declared firmly, "I'm going to open yours with this."
"All right," Polgara said crisply, "that will do, Garion." She removed her cloak and laid it across the back of a chair.
"Aunt Pol," he gasped with relief.
She had already turned to face the four physicians who had been tending the little queen. "Thank you for your efforts, gentlemen," she told them. "I'll send for you if I need you." The note of dismissal in her voice was final, and the four quietly filed out.
"Lady Polgara," Ce'Nedra said weakly from the bed.
Polgara turned to her immediately. "Yes, dear," she said, taking Ce'Nedra's tiny hand in hers. "How do you feel?"
"My chest hurts, and I can't seem to stay awake."
"We'll have you up and about in no time at all, dear," Polgara assured her. She looked critically at the bed. "I think I'm going to need more pillows, Garion," she said. "I want to prop her up into a sitting position." Garion quickly went through the sitting room to the door leading to the corridor outside.
"Yes, your Majesty?" the sentry said as Garion opened the door.
"Do you want to get me about a dozen or so pillows?"
"Of course, your Majesty." The sentry started down the corridor.
"On second thought, make that two dozen." Garion called after him. Then he went back to the bedroom.
"I mean it, Lady Polgara," Ce'Nedra was saying in a weak little voice." If it ever gets to the point where you have to make a choice, save my baby. Don't even think about me."
"I see," Polgara replied gravely. "I hope you've purged yourself of that particular nonsense now."
Ce'Nedra stared at her.
"Melodrama has always made me just ever so faintly nauseous."
A slow flush crept up Ce'Nedra's cheeks.
"That's a very good sign," Aunt Pol encouraged her. "If you can blush, it means that you're well enough to take final note of trivial things."
"Trivial?"
"Such as being embarrassed about how truly stupid that last statement of yours really was. Your baby's fine, Ce'Nedra. In fact, he's better off right now than you are. He's sleeping at the moment."
Ce'Nedra's eyes had gone wide, and her hands were placed protectively over her abdomen. "You can see him?" she asked incredulously.
"See isn't exactly the right word, dear," Polgara said as she mixed two powders together in a glass. "I know what he's doing and what he's thinking about." She added water to the mixture in the glass and watched critically as the contents bubbled and fumed. "Here," she instructed, handing the glass to her patient, "Drink this." Then she turned to Garion. "Build up the fire, dear. It's autumn, after all, and we don't want her getting chilled."
Brand and Silk had rather carefully examined the broken body of the would-be assassin and had shifted their attention to her clothing by the time Garion joined them late that evening.
"Have you found out anything yet?" he asked as he entered the room.
"We know that she was an Alorn," Brand replied in his rumbling voice. "About thirty-five years old, and she didn't work for a living. At least she didn't do anything strenuous enough to put calluses on her hands."
"That's not very much to go on," Garion said.
"It's a start," Silk told him, carefully examining the hem of a bloodstained dress.
"It sort of points at the Bear-cult then, doesn't it?"
"Not necessarily," Silk replied, laying aside the dress and picking up a linen shift. "When you're trying to hide your identity, you pick an assassin from another country. Of course, that kind of thinking might be a little too subtle for the Bear-cult." He frowned. "Now, where have I seen this stitch before?" he muttered, still looking at the dead woman's undergarment.
"I'm so very sorry about Arell," Garion said to Brand. "We were all very fond of her." It seemed like such an inadequate thing to say.
"She would have appreciated that, Belgarion," Brand said quietly. "She loved Ce'Nedra very much."
Garion turned back to Silk with a feeling of frustration boiling up in him. "What are we going to do?" he demanded. "If we can't find out who was behind this, he'll probably just try again."
"I certainlyhope so," Silk said.
"Youwhat?"
"We can save a lot of time if we can catch somebody who's still alive. You can only get so much out of dead people."
"I wish we'd been a little more thorough when we wiped out the Bear-cult at Thull Mardu," Brand said.
"I wouldn't get my mindtoo set on the notion that the Bear-cult was responsible for this," Silk told him. "There are some other possibilities."
"Who else would want to hurt Ce'Nedra?" Garion asked.
Silk sprawled in a chair, scratching absently at his cheek and with his forehead furrowed with thought. "Maybe it wasn't Ce'Nedra," he mused.
"What?"
"It's altogether possible, you know, that the attempt was directed at the baby she's carrying. There could be people out there in the world who do not want there to be an heir to Iron-grip's throne."
"Who?"
"The Grolims come to mind rather quickly," Silk replied. "Or the Nyissans -or even a few Tolnedrans. I want to keep an open mind on the matter -until I find out a few more things." He held up the stained undergarment. "I'm going to start with this. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to take it down to the city and show it to every tailor and seamstress I can find. I might be able to get something out of the weave, and there's a peculiar kind of stitching along the hem. If I can find somebody to identify it for me, it might give us something to work on."
Brand looked thoughtfully over at the still, blanket-draped form of the woman who had tried to kill Ce'Nedra. "She would have had to have entered the Citadel by way of one of the gates," he mused. "That means that she passed a sentry and that she had to have given him some kind of excuse for coming in. I'll round up every man who's been on sentry duty for the past week and bring them all down here to have a look at her. Once we know exactly when she got in, maybe we can start to backtrack her. I'd like to find the ship she arrived on and have a talk with the captain."
"What can I do?" Garion asked quickly.
"Probably you should stay close to Ce'Nedra's room," Silk suggested. "Any time Polgara leaves for any reason at all, you ought to go in and take her place. There could be other attempts, you know, and I think we'll all feel better if Ce'Nedra's guarded rather closely."
Under Polgara's watchful eyes, Ce'Nedra spent a quiet night, and her breathing was much stronger the next day. She complained bitterly about the taste of the medicines she was required to drink, and Polgara listened with a great show of interest to the queen's extensive tirade. "Yes, dear," she agreed pleasantly. "Now drink it all down."
"Does it have to taste so awful?" Ce'Nedra said with a shudder.
"Of course it does. If medicine tasted good, sick people might be tempted to stay sick so that they could enjoy the medicine. The worse it tastes, the quicker you get well."
Late that afternoon, Silk returned with a disgusted look on his face. "I hadn't realized how many ways it's possible to attach two pieces of cloth together," he grumbled.
"No luck, I take it," Garion said.
"Not really," Silk replied, throwing himself into a chair. "I managed to pick up all sorts of educated guesses, though."
"Oh?"
"One tailor was willing to stake his reputation on the fact that this particular stitch is used exclusively in Nyissa. A seamstress told me very confidently that this was an Ulgo garment. And one half-wit went so far as to say that the owner of the garment was a sailor, since this stitch isalways used to repair torn sails."
"What are you talking about, Silk?" Polgara asked curiously as she passed through the sitting room on her way back to Ce'Nedra's bedside.
"I've been trying to get someone to identify the stitching on the hem of this thing," he said in a disgusted tone, waving the bloodstained shift.
"Here. Let me see it."
Silk wordlessly handed her the garment, She glanced at it almost casually. "Northeastern Drasnia," she told him, "from somewhere near the town of Rheon."
"Are you sure?" Silk came to his feet quickly.
She nodded. "That kind of stitching was developed centuries ago -back in the days when all the garments up there were made from reindeer skin."
"That's disgusting," Silk said.
"What is?"
"I ran around with this thing all day long -up and down all those stairs and in and out of every tailor shop in Riva -and all I had to do to find out what I wanted to know was show it to you."
"That's not my fault, Prince Kheldar," she told him, handing back the shift. "If you don't know enough to bring these little problems to me by now, then there probably isn't much hope for you."
"Thanks, Polgara," he said drily.
"Then the assassin was a Drasnian," Garion said.
"Anortheastern Drasnian," Silk corrected. "Those people up there are a strange sort -almost worse than the ones who live in the fens."
"Strange?"
"Standoffish, closemouthed, unfriendly, clannish, secretive. Everybody in northeast Drasnia behaves as if he had all the state secrets in the kingdom tucked up his sleeve."
"Why would they hate Ce'Nedra so much?" Garion asked with a puzzled frown.
"I wouldn't make too much of the fact that this assassin was a Drasnian, Garion," Silk told him. "People who hire other people to do their killing for them don't always go looking for their hirelings close to home -and, although there are a lot of assassins in the world, very few of them are women." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Ido think that I'll take a trip up to Rheon and have a look around, however."
As the chill of winter set in, Polgara finally declared that Ce'Nedra was out of all danger. "I think I'll stay, though," she added. "Durnik and Errand can manage at home for a few months, and I'd probably no sooner get home than I'd have to turn around and come back."
Garion looked at her blankly.
"You didn't actually think that I was going to let anybody else deliver Ce'Nedra's first baby, did you?"
It snowed heavily just before Erastide, and the steep streets of the city of Riva became virtually impassable. Ce'Nedra's disposition soured noticeably. Her increasing girth made her awkward, and the depth of the snow in the city streets had rather effectively confined her to the Citadel.
Polgara took the little queen's outbursts and crying fits calmly, scarcely changing expression, even at the height of the eruptions. "Youdo want to have this baby, don't you?" she asked pointedly on one such occasion.
"Of course I do," Ce'Nedra replied indignantly.
"Well then, you have to go through this. It's the only way I know of to fill the nursery."
"Don't try to be reasonable with me, Lady Polgara," Ce'Nedra flared. "I'm not in the mood for reasonableness right now."
Polgara gave her a faintly amused look, and Ce'Nedra, in spite of herself, began to laugh. "I'm being silly, aren't I?"
"A bit, yes."
"It's just that I feel so huge and ugly."
"That will pass, Ce'Nedra."
"Sometimes I wish I could just lay eggs -the way birds do."
"I'd stick to doing it the old way, dear. I don't think you have the disposition for sitting on a nest."
Erastide came and passed quietly. The celebration on the island was warm, but somewhat restrained. It seemed as if the whole population was holding its breath, waiting for a much larger reason for celebration. Winter ground on with each week adding more snow to the already high-piled drifts. A month or so after Erastide there was a brief thaw, lasting for perhaps two days, and then the frigid chill locked in again, turning the sodden snowbanks into blocks of ice. The weeks plodded by tediously, and everybody waited.
"Would you just look at that?" Ce'Nedra said angrily to Garion one morning shortly after they had arisen.
"At what, dear?" he replied mildly.
"At that!" She pointed disgustedly at the window. "It's snowing again." There was a note of accusation In her voice.
"It's not my fault," he said defensively.
"Did I say that it was?" She turned awkwardly to glare at him. Her tininess made her swollen belly appear all the larger, and she sometimes seemed to thrust it out at him as if it were entirely his doing.
"This is just absolutely insupportable," she declared. "Why have you brought me to this frozen- " She stopped in mid-tirade, a strange look crossing her face.
"Are you all right, dear?" Garion asked.
"Don't 'dear' me, Garion. I-" She stopped again. "Oh, my." she said breathlessly.
"What is it?" He got to his feet.
"Oh, dear," Ce'Nedra said, putting her hands to the small of her back. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear."
"Ce'Nedra, that's not very helpful. What's the matter?"
"I think perhaps I'd better go lie down," she said almost absently. She started across the room, moving at a stately waddle. She stopped. "Oh, dear," she said with much more vehemence. Her face was pale, and she put one hand on a chairback to support herself. "I think that it might be a good idea if you sent for Lady Polgara, Garion."
"Is it- ?, I mean, are you- ?"
"Don't babble, Garion," she said tensely. "Just open the door and scream for your Aunt Pol."
"Are you trying to say that- ?"
"I'm not trying, Garion. I'm saying it. Get her in here right now." She waddled to the bedroom door and stopped again with a little gasp. "Oh, my goodness," she said.
Garion stumbled to the door and jerked it open. "Get Lady Polgara!" he said to the startled sentry. "Immediately! Run!"
"Yes, your Majesty!" the man replied, dropping his spear and sprinting down the hall.
Garion slammed the door and dashed to Ce'Nedra's side. "Can I do anything?" he asked, wringing his hands.
"Help me to bed," she told him.
"Bed!" he said. "Right!" He grabbed her arm and began to tug at her.
"What are you doing?"
"Bed," he blurted, pointing at the royal four-poster.
"I know what it is, Garion. Help me. Don't yank on me."
"Oh." He took her hand, slipped his other arm about her, and lifted her off her feet. He stumbled toward the bed, his eyes wide and his mind completely blank.
"Put me down, you great oaf!"
"Bed," he urged her, trying with all the eloquence at his command to explain. He carefully set her back down on her feet and rushed on ahead. "Nice bed," he said, patting the coverlets encouragingly.
Ce'Nedra closed her eyes and sighed. "Just step out of my way, Garion," she said with resignation.
"But-"
"Why don't you build up the fire?" she suggested.
"What?" He stared around blankly.
"The fireplace -that opening in the wall with the burning logs in it. Put some more wood in there. We want it nice and warm for the baby, don't we?" She reached the bed and leaned against it.
Garion dashed to the fireplace and stood staring at it stupidly.
"What's the matter now?"
"Wood," he replied. "No wood."
"Bring some in from the other room."
What an absolutely brilliant suggestion she had just made! He stared at her gratefully.
"Go into the other room, Garion," she said, speaking very slowly and distinctly. "Pick up some wood. Carry it back in here. Put it on the fire. Have you got all that so far?"
"Right!" he said excitedly. He dashed into the other room, picked up a stick of firewood, and dashed back in with it.
"Wood," he said, holding the stick up proudly.
"Very nice, Garion," she said, climbing laboriously into the bed. "Now put it on the fire and go back out and bring in some more."
"More," he agreed, flinging the stick into the fireplace and dashing out the door again.
After he had emptied the woodbin in the sitting room -one stick at a time- he stared around wildly, trying to decide what to do next. He picked up a chair. If he were to swing it against the wall, he reasoned, it ought to break up into manageable pieces.
The door to the apartment opened, and Polgara came in. She stopped to stare at the wild-eyed Garion. "What on earth are you doing with that chair?" she demanded.
"Wood," he explained, brandishing the heavy piece of furniture. "Need wood -for the fire."
She gave him a long look, smoothing down the front of her white apron. "I see," she said. "It's going to be one of those. Put the chair down, Garion. Where's Ce'Nedra?"
"Bed," he replied, regretfully setting down the polished chair. Then he looked at her brightly. "Baby," he informed her.
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "Garion," she said, speaking carefully as if to a child, "it's much too early for Ce'Nedra to be taking to her bed. She needs to walk around -keep moving."
He shook his head stubbornly. "Bed," he repeated. "Baby." He looked around and picked up the chair again.
Polgara sighed, opened the door, and beckoned to the sentry. "Young man," she said, "why don't you take his Majesty here down to that courtyard just outside the kitchen? There's a large pile of logs there. Get him an axe so that he can cut up some firewood."
Everybody was being absolutely brilliant today. Garion marveled at the suggestion Aunt Pol had just made. He set down the chair again and dashed out with the baffled sentry in tow.
He chopped up what seemed like a cord of wood in the first hour, sending out a positive blizzard of chips as he swung the axe so fast that it seemed almost to blur in the air. Then he paused, pulled off his doublet, and really got down to work. About noon, a respectful cook brought him a slab of freshly roasted beef, a large chunk of bread, and some ale. Garion wolfed down three or four bites, took a couple of gulps of the ale, and then picked up his axe to attack another log. It was altogether possible that he might have finished up with the woodpile outside the kitchen and then gone in search of more trees had not Brand interrupted him shortly before the sun went down.
The big, gray-haired Warder had a broad grin on his face.
"Congratulations, Belgarion," he said. "You have a son."
Garion paused, looking almost regretfully at the remaining logs. Then what Brand had just said finally seeped into his awareness. The axe slid from his fingers. "A son?" he said. "What an amazing thing. And so quickly, too." He looked at the woodpile. "I only just now got here. I always thought that it took much longer."
Brand looked at him carefully, then gently took him by the arm. "Come along now, Belgarion," he said. "Let's go up and meet your son." Garion bent and carefully picked up an armload of wood.
"For the fire." he explained. "Ce'Nedra wants a nice fire."
"She'll be very proud of you, Belgarion," Brand assured him.
When they reached the royal bedchamber, Garion carefully put his armload of wood on the polished table by the window and approached the bed on tiptoe.
Ce'Nedra looked very tired and wan, but there was, nonetheless, a contented little smile on her face. Nestled beside her in a soft blanket was a very small person. The newcomer had a red face and almost no hair. He seemed to be asleep, but as Garion approached, his eyes opened. Gravely, the crown prince looked at his father, then sighed, burped, and went back to sleep.
"Oh, isn't he just beautiful, Garion?" Ce'Nedra said in a wondering little voice.
"Yes," Garion replied with a great lump coming up into his throat. "And so are you." He knelt beside the bed and put his arms about them both.
"Very nice, children," Polgara said from the other side of the bed. "You both did just fine."
The following day Garion and his newborn son went through a very ancient ceremony. With Polgara at his side in a splendid blue and silver gown, he carried the baby to the Hall of the Rivan King, where the nobles of the island kingdom awaited them. As the three of them entered the Hall, the Orb of Aldur, standing on the pommel of Iron-grip's sword, blazed forth with a great shimmer of blue light. Almost bemused, Garion approached his throne. "This is my son, Geran," he announced -in part to the gathered throng, but also, in a peculiar way, to the Orb itself. The choice of his son's name had not been difficult. Though he could not remember his father, Garion had wanted to honor him, and no way seemed more appropriate that to givehis son his father's name.
He carefully handed the baby to Polgara, reached up, and took down the great sword. Holding it by the blade, he extended it toward the blanket-wrapped infant in Polgara's arms. The shimmering glow of the Orb grew brighter. And then, as if attracted by that light, Geran stretched forth his tiny pink hand and put it on the glowing jewel. A great aura of many-colored light burst from the Orb at the infant's touch, surrounding the three of them with a pulsating rainbow that illuminated the entire Hall. A vast chorus filled Garion's ears, rising to an enormous chord that seemed to shake the whole world.
"Hail Geran!" Brand boomed in a great voice, "heir to the throne of Iron-grip and keeper of the Orb of Aldur!"
"Hail Geran!" the throng echoed in a thunderous shout.
"Hail Geran,"
the dry voice in Garion's mind added quietly.
Polgara said nothing. She did not need to speak, since the look in her eyes said everything that needed saying.
Although it was winter and the Sea of the Winds was lashed by storms, the Alorn Kings all journeyed to Riva to celebrate the birth of Geran. Many others, friends and old acquaintances, joined with Anheg, Cho-Hag, and Queen Porenn on the journey to Riva. Barak was there, of course, accompanied by his wife Merel. Hettar and Adara arrived.
Lelldorin and Mandorallen came up from Arendia with Ariana and Nerina.
Garion, now somewhat more sensitive to such things, was amazed at how many children his friends had produced. No matter which way he turned, there seemed to be babies, and the sound of little boys and girls running and laughing filled the sober halls of the Citadel. The boy-king Kheva of Drasnia and Barak's son Unrak soon became the closest of friends.
Nerina's daughters romped with Adara's sons in endless games involving much giggling. Barak's eldest daughter, Gundred, now a ravishing young lady, cut a broad track through the hearts of whole platoons of young Rivan nobles, all the while under the watchful eye of her huge, red-bearded father, who never actually threatened any of his daughter's suitors, but whose looks said quite plainly that he would tolerate no foolishness. Little Terzie, Gundred's younger sister, hovered on the very brink of womanhood -romping one moment with the younger children and looking the next with devastating eyes at the group of adolescent Rivan boys who always seemed to be around.
King Fulrach and General Brendig sailed over from Sendaria about midway through the celebration. Queen Layla sent her fondest congratulations, but she did not make the trip with her husband. "She almost got on board the ship," Fulrach reported, "but then a gust of wind made a wave break over the stones of the quay, and she fainted. We decided not to subject her to the voyage at that point."
"It's probably best," Garion agreed.
Durnik and Errand came up from the Vale, naturally, and with them came Belgarath.
The celebration went on for weeks. There were banquets and formal presentations of gifts, both by the visitors and by the ambassadors of various friendly kingdoms. And, of course, there were hours of reminiscences and a fair amount of serious drinking. Ce'Nedra was in her glory, since she and her infant son were the absolute center of attention. Garion found that the festivities, coupled with his normal duties, left him almost no free time at all. He wished that he could find an hour or two to talk with Barak, Hettar, Mandorallen, and Lelldorin; but no matter how he tried to rearrange his days, the time simply was not there.
Very late one evening, however, Belgarath came looking for him. Garion looked up from a report he had been reading as the old sorcerer entered his study. "I thought we might want to talk for a bit," the old man said.
Garion tossed aside the report. "I haven't meant to neglect you, Grandfather," he apologized, "but they're keeping my days pretty well filled up."
Belgarath shrugged. "Things are bound to settle down in a while. Did I ever get around to congratulating you?"
"I think so."
"Good. That's taken care of, then. People always make such a fuss about babies. I don't really care that much for them myself. They're all squally and wet, most of the time, and it's almost impossible to talk to them. You don't mind if I help myself, do you?" He pointed at a crystal decanter of pale wine standing on a table.
"No. Go ahead."
"You want some?"
"No thanks, Grandfather."
Belgarath poured himself a goblet of wine and then settled down in a chair across from Garion's. "How's the king business?" he asked.
"Tedious," Garion replied ruefully.
"Actually, that's not a bad thing, you know. When it gets exciting, that usually means that something pretty awful is happening."
"I suppose you're right."
"Have you been studying?"
Garion sat up quickly. "I'm glad you brought that up. Things have been so hectic that something sort of important had almost slipped my mind. " "Oh?"
"How careful were people when they made copies of those prophecies?"
Belgarath shrugged. "Fairly careful, I suppose. Why do you ask?"
"I think that something got left out of my copy of the Mrin Codex."
"What makes you think so?"
"There's a passage in there that just doesn't make sense."
"Maybe not to you, but you haven't been studying all that long."
"That's not what I mean, Grandfather. I'm not talking about an obscure meaning. When I'm getting at is a sentence that starts out and then just stops without going anywhere. I mean, it doesn't have any ending the way it should."
"You're concerned about grammar?"
Garion scratched at his head. "It's the only passage I found in there that breaks off that way. It goes, 'But behold, the stone which lies at the center of the light shall- ' And then there's a blot, and it takes up again with '-and this meeting will come to pass in a place which is no more, and there will the choice be made.' "
Belgarath frowned. "I think I know the passage," he said.
"The two just don't fit together, Grandfather. The first part is talking about the Orb -at least that's the way I read it- and the second part is talking about a meeting. I don't know what word is under that blot, but I can't for the life of me figure out how the two parts could be hooked together. I think there's something missing. That's why I was asking about how they went about copying these things. Could the scribe who was doing it have skipped a couple of lines?"
"I don't think so, Garion," Belgarath said. "The new copy is always compared with the old one by somebody other than the scribe. Weare fairly careful about things like that."
"Then what's under the blot?"
Belgarath scratched his beard thoughtfully. "I can't quite recall," he admitted. "Anheg's here. Maybe he remembers -or you can ask him to transcribe that part from his copy and send it to you when he gets back to Val Alorn."
"That's a good idea."
"I wouldn't worry too much about it, Garion. It's only part of one passage, after all."
"There are a lot of things in there that are only one passage, Grandfather, and they turned out to be sort of important."
"If it bothers you so much, chase it down. That's a good way to learn."
"Aren't you the least bit curious about it?"
"I have other things on my mind. You're the one who found this discrepancy, so I'll give you all the glory of exposing it to the world and working out the solution."
"You're not being very much help, Grandfather."
Belgarath grinned at him. "I'm not really trying to be, Garion. You're grown up enough now to solve your own problems." He looked over at the decanter. "I believe I'll have just another little touch of that," he said.