‘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.